Senseless
by Moonstarer
Summary: Grissom was brilliant at solving cases, but could he do it blindfold? A lot of angst for Grissom, plus a mystery. AU after season 6 and Sara's still on the team! Friendships only, sorry no GSR. Caution: This is very dark. COMPLETE! I can hardly believe it
1. Chapter 1

I make no claim to own CSI, the characters or any of the situations therein, I write in homage, with no intent to steal.

**Senseless**

Sara slipped into the back of the meeting hall in time to hear the last of Grissom's talk, one of the Sheriff's "show them you're worth their tax dollars, but don't give the impression that Las Vegas might be dangerous" initiatives. Sara was reminded once again of the lecture that had been the first time she saw Gil Grissom, as, effortlessly projecting his voice, he held his audience's attention throughout, even though then, as now, he was speaking without visual aids.

Grissom wound up and prepared to take questions from the audience. "If you have a question, could you please raise your hand and let my assistant come to you with a microphone." A young man, whom Sara guessed to be a police cadet on loan to Grissom for the evening, moved his way through the spectators, the first couple of people that he picked out asked the usual inane questions to be expected at such an event and Grissom answered them smoothly. Then the next questioner stood up.

Sara had already pegged the man as a journalist. He'd slipped his notebook into his jacket pocket before raising his hand, but there was still a portable voice recorder in his other hand. Unfortunately the police cadet had not been so observant and the question got asked.

"Dr. Grissom, could you please tell me what progress there has been in your own case? It seems odd to me that the efficient and effective crime lab that you have just described has so far failed to pull in any suspects for an attack on one of their own most senior people."

Sara, who had turned her attention to Grissom immediately the reporter started to speak had seen him stiffen at the mention of his "own case", and the way his mouth tightened as the man derided the lab was enough for someone who knew him so well to see he was suppressing his anger.

"As I believe I said before I began, the incident which resulted in my blindness is still under investigation. For legal reasons I am not involved, and even if I were I would not be at liberty to discuss the matter.

"Thank you for attending, Ladies and Gentlemen, I hope I have been able to enlighten you in some way regarding the workings of the Las Vegas Crime Lab. Good night."

Grissom took a step back and reached out a hand to locate the chair beside him before sitting with his head lowered slightly as the ushers encouraged the audience to begin clearing the hall.

Sara took a moment to control her own anger before approaching the stage. She could happily have punched the journalist. Before he'd spoken she'd got the impression that Grissom was managing to relax, having found something he was still able to do well, even without his sight. Normally he hated this kind of PR speaking, but it had probably made him realise that lecturing and teaching would still be options if the worst happened and his blindness turned out to be permanent. That one question had been enough to ruin it though and, although Grissom had retained his dignity, the more the growing silence indicated the audience's departure the more Grissom's shoulders were slumping, and the more tired he seemed. Taking a final calming breath, Sara moved towards the stage, allowing her feet to scuff a little so she wouldn't startle Grissom too much. Perhaps what she had to say would give him something different, if not happier, to think about.

TBC

A/N This is my first "toe in the water" piece of fanfic. There's a lot more to this story and future chapters will be longer, but I wanted to put something up to see what feedback I might get, so please review!


	2. Chapter 2

I make no claim to own CSI, the characters or any of the situations therein, I write in homage, with no intent to steal.

**Senseless**

Grissom raised his head as he heard Sara's approach. Never afraid to be idiosyncratic, he was not wearing the traditional dark glasses, but instead had a rolled bandana tied over his eyes, like a blindfold. The cotton fabric was striped in dark shades of blue, purple and green and went well with the dark palette of colours Grissom had adopted for his working wardrobe.

"Hey, Griss."

"Sara." It was a statement, not a question, he'd always known her voice. With his eyes obscured and his expressive eyebrows half hidden Sara's attention was concentrated on his mouth, and she was pleased to see that the smile he gave her, although thin had at least reached both sides. Grissom was a master of the half smile, and even those few people who could claim to know him well sometimes had trouble deciding if the half completed action was because he wanted to smile, but thought he shouldn't, or didn't want to smile, but thought he should and, being Grissom, there was probably a third, as yet unknown explanation. Now Grissom tilted his head to one side questioningly, "Shouldn't you be on your way to work?"

"I am, I have a vic. to see, I was hoping you'd come and help."

Now Grissom's mouth shifted into a frown. "I think I've had enough 'make work' for one night, Sara, I'd rather just go home, maybe you can try and humour me tomorrow instead." He raised his voice, "Neil!" The cadet, who had been waiting at the back of the hall, started to move towards them. Meanwhile Grissom was standing. Removing his jacket from the back of the chair he began to put it on. Sara, still mentally cursing the journalist for putting Grissom in such a bad mood, put her hand on his arm to stop him.

"Grissom, would I ever do that to you? You know I'd hate it just as much as you if someone tried inventing work just to occupy me. I really do need you." There had been a time when the last sentence would have had a double meaning, but that was behind them now. Although their relationship had lasted a while, they'd realised they were too alike for it to truly last, fortunately in time for them both to step back and retain a warmth and friendship for each other that most former couples could only dream of.

"Dr. Grissom?" Neil had reached them, but Sara's words had apparently reached Grissom too.

"Thanks for your help tonight, Neil. You can go home now, Miss Sidle will see I get home safely." Thanking him, the young man left, and Sara, taking Grissom's hand and placing it in the crook of her arm led him out of the building to her car.

Concentrating on the still unfamiliar acts of leading and being led, the pair did not speak much until they were safely in the car and Sara was easing the vehicle out into the traffic. Once he could feel that the car was moving steadily Grissom asked Sara to tell him about her victim.

"According to her passport she's Anne Harris, 35 years old, a British citizen. She was found semi-conscious on Debbie Reynolds Drive, near the Convention Centre, four days ago. She'd been reported as missing by her hotel, a few days earlier, when she didn't check out on the day she was supposed to leave, although she may actually have gone missing some time prior to that, and all her stuff was still in her room. Nick and Warrick processed, but there was no sign of a struggle or anyone having been in the room other than the victim. and the hotel's regular domestic staff, so it looks like whatever happened to her occurred elsewhere. We need her to tell us where, when and what, and preferably who."

"Wouldn't that be a little too easy, Sara?" Grissom asked, a little of his old humour returning now he was slipping into work mode. " So, how come you've left it so long to talk to her? And you haven't told me yet what her injuries are, or why you need me to be there."

Sara chewed her lip for a moment, still trying to find the best way to phrase what she had to say. She hoped Grissom would assume that the need to concentrate on the road ahead was delaying her reply but, of course Grissom never assumed anything.

"Sara?"

"She hasn't spoken since she was found. The doctors think it's psychological. Most of her injuries are those you might associate with a struggle followed by restraint." Sara took a deep breath and, hearing it Grissom, who had been sitting facing ahead turned towards her listening hard. "She can't see either, Griss. Her consultant is the same guy who's taking care of you, he's pretty certain it was done the same way."

"And you think I can persuade her to talk to you. I didn't realise it was going to be my people skills you wanted, and this? Sara, I don't know if I can."

"Please, Griss, you know how important this could be. He obviously had her under his control for a while, she may have heard something, felt something, maybe she even saw the guy before..."

"And neither Greg nor I could give you anything because he didn't physically come near me at all." Grissom paused for a moment, "OK, I'll try to do what I can, but you know I shouldn't be involved."

"Neither should I or the rest of the team, but we're so short handed at the moment. You know what it's like. I just need you to get her to talk, Griss, after that I'll lead the interview, it's just a preliminary witness thing, Brass will do it more formally later if necessary, and I know you won't say anything which could be construed as leading her."

"All right." Grissom settled himself back against the seat, head facing forward once more.

Trying to fill the silence and keep Grissom informed, Sara began to narrate their route, until Grissom stopped her. "As long as the vehicle is still moving I'll know you must still be there and presumably heading the right way, I don't need to be constantly updated." He realised he was sounding a little harsh, "Thanks anyway."

Around fifteen minutes later, Sara was manoeuvring them into a parking space at Desert Palms hospital. Grissom managed to unfasten himself and climb out of the familiar vehicle without much fumbling, but Sara, her mind on the case ahead had forgotten he couldn't see where she was going and was already heading away.

"Hold on," he called, "This thing is old technology," he indicated the folding cane he had removed from his pocket, "it stops me tripping over things, but it doesn't actually tell me which way to go."

Sara hurried back, taking his hand and squeezing it in apology, before placing it on her arm and leading him towards the hospital doors.

Once inside they took an elevator up to the ophthalmology ward. At the nurse's station they were both recognised from Grissom's own inpatient stay, and Sara explained why they were there, checking that Miss Harris was well enough to be visited. The nurse confirmed that she was, and also that she still hadn't spoken.

Entering the woman's private room, they found the patient propped up on a number of pillows, with dressings neatly taped over her eyes. At first glance she seemed unmoving, maybe even asleep, but her hands were fidgeting with the blankets over her lap, bunching and twisting them between her fingers. They stopped moving as the door clicked shut behind Sara and Grissom and the woman's head tracked them as Sara guided Grissom to take a seat beside the bed, before stepping back a little.

"Miss Harris? My name is Gil Grissom," Sara smiled a little as Griss began to introduce himself in the old familiar way, "I worked for the Las Vegas Crime Lab." Past tense, Sara didn't like the sound of that. Officially he would remain on the payroll until his prognosis was firmer and decisions could be made and, even though he was on sick leave, he was still considered available for a little work, like tonight's lecture, or this, which Catherine would slip into the paperwork as a "consultancy". But Grissom had said "worked", did he already believe his career was finished?

Sara shook her head, denying the thought and forcing her mind back onto the job in hand. Grissom had managed to find the victim's hand with his own and had moved her fingers up to feel the bandanna over his eyes as he explained that he too had been blinded in an attack, and that he needed the woman to talk to Sara so that they could work out if it was the same person, and find a way to catch them. Grissom continued for several minutes in this way and Sara watched his mouth as he spoke, his soft voice was certainly calming her, if not Miss Harris.

Anne was growing more agitated. Why couldn't any of these people see what was wrong? The man talking to her now seemed nice enough, he kept saying "trust me" and she did, she just couldn't tell him that. If someone said "just talk to me" to her just one more time... Yes, there it was, he'd said it.

"I can't", she tried to yell, wanted to scream, but all that came out was a whisper, a scratch, and no discernible words at all.

She felt Grissom's fingers tense slightly where he had still been loosely holding her hand, then he shifted his grip, placing two fingers on the palm of her hand before folding her own fingers around them.

"Miss Harris, Anne, let's try something else, I want you to squeeze my fingers, once for yes, twice for no." Even without being able to see his face, Anne could sense his wry amusement as he used the old cliché. Then he asked, "Is something physically preventing you from speaking?" Instead of squeezing once, Anne lifted Grissom's hand to her throat. She'd assumed that there must be some visible marks there, but apparently there weren't and maybe that was why her difficulties hadn't been registered earlier. She did know that there were some odd bumps on the skin there. Maybe, with his senses concentrated in touch, this man, Grissom would feel them too.

Grissom could. Carefully extracting his fingers from the woman's hand so he could feel properly he gently traced them over the woman's throat, detecting three round bumps in the area where a man would have had his Adam's apple. Anne took his hand again. Letting his fingers trace across her face so he could keep his bearings, she brought his hand up past her jaw, round her left ear, and into her hair a couple of inches further back.

"Grissom? What's going on? What is she showing you?" Sara was bemused.

"There are bumps, injuries perhaps, three small ones on her throat, and another here, this one's larger, and I can feel a scab." The woman nodded under his hand. "Was this done to you by the same person who blinded you?" Another nod.

Sara had come closer. "I can't see anything on her throat, Griss, the doctors mustn't have either, they were just assuming the trauma had stopped her talking and left it at that."

"Maybe they'll show up under an ALS. Get the one from the car. Don't forget your camera too, even if we can't show the throat injury we can document the one on her scalp." Supervisor Grissom was talking now, and Sara didn't mind one bit. With a brief acknowledgement she hurried off on her errand.

Returning several minutes later Sara found Grissom still holding the victim's hands and talking to her softly. The woman's head was turned towards him and she appeared to be listening intently. Sara understood that Grissom would need to keep hold of one of Anne's hands so she could use the squeezing code he'd suggested, but the fact he was holding _both _her hands in his was a surprise. Grissom didn't do empathy with victims. Then Sara reminded herself, Grissom was a victim too, probably of the same man. His own attack had been less than a month ago and he must recognise what this woman was feeling, must understand. Despite what had been said about him in the past, by herself as well as others, Sara knew Grissom was no robot, he was empathising with this woman because he had no choice.

Somehow sensing Sara's return Grissom turned his head towards her.

"Hey, Griss! I got the ALS and camera. Miss Harris, I bumped into your doctor on the way up, he's going to come check on your throat as soon as he's free. He also said you should both wear dark visors while I use the ALS, he doesn't want to risk extra damage to your eyes from the UV and it can penetrate cloth." Placing one visor in Grissom's hands, Sara gently placed the other over Anne Harris' bandaged eyes before checking to see how Griss was doing.

Apparently unable to fit the visor on over his bandana, Grissom had untied it and was putting it in his top pocket where he had previously stored his glasses when not in use. His sightless eyes were wide open, looking bluer than ever under the bright hospital lights, and with the pupils shrunk to the absolute minimum size. His eyes were moving, pupils wandering as though he was trying to fix on something but never quite managing it. Sara was unable to turn her own eyes away from the sight, and she was relieved when Grissom finally slipped the dark visor into place.

"OK, Sara, why don't you dim these lights and see what the ALS shows up."

Sara had been careful not to ask Grissom too many questions about his lack of sight, but this puzzled her. "How do you know the lights are still on? I didn't know you could tell light from dark."

"I can't. Not really. I don't _see _the difference, too much light just hurts." He'd been told that this was a good sign, that his optic nerve must be working in some way, but he found it frustrating. He couldn't see, but he still had to keep his eyes covered most of the time, or he developed a headache of almost migraine proportions.

Deciding not to question further Sara got the ALS working and managed to get pictures of both the victim's neck and scalp injuries. Later she would get hold of the results of any tests that Miss Harris' doctors chose to ran and run those and the pictures past Doc. Robbins for his input. He'd be happy to try and interpret them, he was always pleased when a victim _didn't_ physically end up in his domain.

Grissom had got Anne to agree to a brief interview. Sara had to carefully phrase her questions so that they could be answered yes or no, and Grissom interpreted the squeezes aloud for the tape. Occasionally Anne had to resort to gesture to try and express something and it became a peculiar triangular form of communication when Sara had to try and describe Anne's actions to Grissom so he could help work out their meaning.

It took a while but they were able to establish a number of things. The abduction had taken place ten days after Grissom's blinding. Anne had been incapacitated by a very bright light which matched the description Grissom had given, and so she had been unable to see her abductor. The best description she could give was to confirm he was male and that he was much larger than her, which didn't mean a lot, Sara estimated Anne wasn't much more than five feet tall. This man unsurprisingly had an American accent, but, being British, Anne couldn't place it any more than not southern and probably not New York. When Anne had begun to scream at the man he'd done something to her throat, with what felt like a large needle, and later he'd done something to her head with a different instrument. They'd had to end the interview at that point, no anaesthetic had been used and the memory was obviously distressing.

Grissom tried to calm the woman while Sara packed away her equipment, but she was still clinging tightly to his hand as he stood up to leave. To Sara's surprise Grissom promised that he would visit Anne again in a couple of days, when he had an appointment at the department anyway.

It was a quiet drive back to Grissom's place, both he and Sara were mentally processing the evidence from Anne's interview, and neither were great conversationalists at the best of times. After parking, Sara began to guide Grissom up to his house, but once he could locate the edges of his front path with his cane, Grissom stopped her, he could manage. Sara didn't argue, but Griss knew she wouldn't leave until she was sure he was safely inside.

Reaching his front door he folded his cane and found his keys, pressing a button on his watch as he did so.

"_Ten thirty- nine p.m."_ The cheap novelty speaking watch was the only gadget he'd bought to accommodate his handicap, and he never used it with others around. The time confirmed that it must be dark outside, so Grissom flicked on the light as he entered the hallway. Closing the door behind him he stood waiting for a few minutes to allow Sara to leave before switching the light off again and carrying on into his home.

Sara sighed as she saw Grissom's house go dark, slipping the vehicle into drive, she slowly pulled away, heading back to the Lab.

TBC

A/N

Apologies to GSR fans, but it wouldn't be so angsty for Grissom if he had Sara, would it?

Apologies to non GSR fans, I haven't forgotten the rest of the team, they will be appearing soon!


	3. Chapter 3

-1I make no claim to own CSI, the characters or any of the situations therein, I write in homage, with no intent to steal.

**Senseless**

Grissom removed his jacket and dropped his keys, wallet and folded cane onto a table by the coat stand where he knew he could always find them.

A man of habit, Grissom had hardly changed the layout of his home in years, and this made life easier for him now. He made his way straight to the couch with less difficulty than in the past when he'd been blinded by a migraine, and located the remote for his sound system. Selecting the first disc in the changer which, by another of his habits, was always relaxing classical music, Grissom removed the bandana and placed it on the coffee table next to the remote, then leaned back to try and relax before he headed up to bed.

As Bach filled the room, Grissom realised that he'd had this selection of music in his system for quite a while. He'd get Warrick to change the discs next time he came over to feed the racing roaches. Maybe a little Grieg would be nice.

Warrick had been a huge help since Grissom had lost his sight, together with Catherine and Nick he'd had a support team from the start, but Warrick was the only one prepared to handle his insects, Catherine just refused point blank, and Nick, well no-one could blame Nick for not wanting to get to close to any insects he didn't have to. Although Grissom took advantage of Warrick's presence to handle his pets he didn't dare open the terrarium when he was alone. He could probably track down any escapees by the loud hissing sounds they made, but Griss thought it was probably better not to risk having to do it. He tried not to think about having to part with his race team, although he knew many of his rivals would be keen to get hold of one of his strain to breed from. Fortunately his roaches would live for a good three years at least, so it was one decision he could defer for a while at least.

Grissom had been forced into a diurnal routine while in hospital, and had decided to stick with that, because it was easier to make sure he got to his various follow up appointments if he was habitually awake during the day. Fortunately Catherine, Nick and Warrick each had different ways of coping with working permanent nights and were able to call on him at different times of the day. At his grumpiest moments Grissom had accused them of nurse-maiding him, but he hoped they realised he was grateful even if he was notoriously bad at expressing it.

Grissom let his mind wander for a while, occasionally his fingers moved in time to the piano concerto he was listening to. One skill he'd never attempted to learn was playing a musical instrument, perhaps now he would give it a try. Braille first though, or Moon, which was supposed to be easier for those who were used to reading by sight, he'd need some way to be able to read and mark things, even if it was just so he could identify the contents of his fridge a little more easily. Grissom sighed deeply, he'd been putting off the offer of a place on a course for the newly visually impaired in the hope he wouldn't need it. Still, he tried justifying it to himself, no skill was ever wasted, and his ability to sign and lip-read had not gone to unused simply because he'd had the operation to restore his hearing.

He'd thought then that he'd reconciled himself to the loss of one of his senses, but he'd had his mother's example of how it was possible to cope without hearing, and she had done extremely well, succeeding as a single mother and sole wage earner after his father's death. However, growing up in that household had made him highly visually oriented, and the idea of spending the remainder of his life without his sight scared him far more than he cared to admit.

Grissom took a few deep breaths, forcing himself to be calm. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes, letting the music wash over him and clear his mind. Thank God his hearing had been restored.

Finally, after the last few bars of music died away, Grissom stirred himself and went upstairs to bed.

-----

Pain.

The heavy blackout drapes he had in his bedroom must have been open last night, and now the morning sun was penetrating his eyelids, making his head ache. He'd have to speak to Catherine. He understood that she wanted to open up the room and let the air circulate, but Grissom didn't always remember to check his windows when he went to bed, and the result was this rude awakening. Grissom groped around in his bedside drawer, grabbing a wrap around dark visor which he quickly put in place, giving him instant relief. In general he preferred his bandanas, they kept out the light effectively and the feel of soft cotton on his eyelids was somehow comforting, but the visor was more practical in the mornings. Being plastic he could keep it on while he showered, with the added benefit of keeping any stray shampoo out of his eyes.

After completing his shower Grissom towelled his hair, and then brushed his teeth. Picking up his electric shaver, a previously hardly used gift, as he really preferred to wet shave, he started removing his whiskers, carefully checking with his fingers to make sure he wasn't missing anywhere. He had thought about letting his beard grow back, but had realised that keeping it groomed into any sort of shape would be far more difficult than remaining clean shaven.

His last action before leaving the bathroom was to carefully bathe his eyes using cotton pads and a lotion provided by the hospital. He'd wrapped several elastic bands around the bottle to make sure that he didn't accidentally get his bottles mixed up and cause himself serious damage.

Returning to the bedroom, Grissom dressed himself in T-shirt, sweat pants and running shoes and pulled a fresh bandana out of the drawer. He'd actually only owned the striped one that he'd been wearing the previous night before he'd been assaulted, he'd got Catherine to buy more, as she was the person he trusted most not to slip in one with red polka-dots or a pirate theme. Tying it around his eyes he made sure that he had put the plastic visor back in his bedside drawer, where he could find it easily next morning.

Grissom was downstairs, trying to locate the orange juice he was certain should be in his fridge when the doorbell rang.

When he heard the locks being undone, Nick called out to identify himself to Grissom, who quickly opened the door and invited the younger man in.

"Hey, Griss, ready to go?" Nick chose to do most of his sleeping in the afternoons, so he came round to Grissom's home each morning after his shift. Officially he was there to help Grissom carry on with the regular exercise he'd been trying to do for the last couple of years, although Griss himself suspected it was as much to make sure he didn't loiter in bed feeling sorry for himself.

"Nearly. Would you mind seeing if you can find any O.J. in the fridge? I'm sure Catherine said she'd bought some."

Nick wandered over to check. "Yeah, it's here, must have got pushed to the back of the shelf. Mind if I have some too?" Grissom shrugged, and Nick poured two glasses and placed one in Grissom's hand. They sipped for a moment in silence, and then Nick spoke, "I'm on call this morning, Grissom, couple of day shift guys are in court. They know I'll be with you, and that I'll need time to bring you home before I can head off anyplace else." Grissom acknowledged that and, after putting their glasses in the dishwasher the two men headed out, picking up Grissom's things from the table on the way.

When he could still see Grissom had preferred to swim to keep fit, complementing this with gentle jogging as load bearing exercise. Now he found it disorienting being in the pool and the chlorine irritated his eyes. Initially Nick had tried to lead Grissom while he jogged, but Nick's natural pace was more of a run and the differences in their strides had made the exercise impractical. So they'd settled for a brisk walk, down to a large park a few blocks from Grissom's house, picking up bagels and coffee on the way. They'd sit in the park's "sensory garden" and eat breakfast before making a couple of laps around the park and heading back.

It wasn't long after they'd arrived at the park when Nick's cell rang. He wandered off a little way seeking better reception, leaving Grissom sitting chewing on his bagel. Grissom had liked the sensory garden even before he became blind, the breeze blowing through the bamboo which had been planted there was the nearest thing in Las Vegas to the sound of the surf, and it reminded him of his childhood growing up by the ocean, he'd often come in the evenings before work just to listen to that and watch the moths gathering around the flowers of the night-scented stock. He was learning more about the garden now though. The pea gravel paths were deliberately narrow there and lined with scented herbs. It was possible to work out where in the space you were as legs brushing against them made the plants release wafts of lavender, rosemary and even a strong curry smell in one area. Even the seat he was sitting on was not one of the wooden benches to be found elsewhere in the park, but a planter filled with lawn camomile, which felt soft beneath his fingers and released a soothing scent of its own.

Footsteps on the gravel indicated Nick's return.

"Sorry, Griss, I'm going to have to cut things short, there's a d.b. waiting for me in Henderson." Grissom shrugged, he enjoyed these mornings with Nick more than he had thought he would, but he knew work came first.

"The d.b. might be waiting Nick, but the evidence may not be hanging around. Take me home."

Nick led the way, trying not to let Grissom feel his concern through the hand placed on his arm. The d.b. looked like it could be another victim of the guy who had blinded his boss. First there was an assault then an abduction, if this turned out to be murder then things were escalating fast and a new serial killer might be in emergence. Nick suppressed his shiver, this guy needed to be caught fast and so far clues to his identity were thin on the ground.

TBC


	4. Chapter 4

I make no claim to own CSI, the characters or any of the situations therein, I write in homage, with no intent to steal.

**Senseless**

Grissom had almost had to throw Nick out to go on his case. They'd got home quickly enough from the park, Grissom having enough confidence in Nick's ability to lead him that he had left his cane in his pocket so they had made their way pretty quickly along the smooth, well maintained, sidewalks of the area of Vegas in which he lived. He'd expected Nick to leave him at his door and head off to his crime scene, but Nick had insisted on checking Grissom's mail box and then started hunting around for a cassette player so that Grissom could listen to the two cassettes that had been amongst the other post. One was from the American Foundation for the Blind, and the other was postmarked Marina Del Rey.

Grissom was puzzled by Nick's prevarication, perhaps his friend felt guilty about leaving him so soon, but he would have thought Nick knew him well enough to know that he would expect Nick to put his work first. He'd tried to reassure Nick that he was grateful to him, but that knew the younger man needed to go to work. Fortunately Nick had finally taken the hint and left before Grissom had to revert to supervisor mode and give him a short lecture on prioritising.

He'd located his old tape deck pretty quickly after Nick had gone and now he placed the tape from Marina Del Rey into the machine and started it going.

"My dearest Gil," it began. It was his mother's voice. She had been unable to hear herself for nearly seventy years now and it would have been hard to make the words out if Grissom had not been so familiar with her voice, and the added distortion of the tape wasn't helping. His mother had apparently realised this, because now the voice changed to that of his aunt, who translated her sister-in-law's signs into words for the tape. The message was much as his communications with his mother had always been, general chat about what she was doing, people she had met, things like that, and his blindness was only referenced in passing, as his mother spoke about people who had asked after him. Only at the end of the tape did his mother mention it directly, repeating her offer to come to him, or have him stay with her, whenever he was ready. But Mrs. Grissom knew her only son very well and it would be his decision when that time was.

Not yet. He wasn't ready yet.

Grissom turned off the player and checked the time, wondering how best to fill the next few hours before Catherine would arrive. He hadn't realised how much he'd miss having people around him, now that simply passing the hours quietly reading was impossible. When he'd been in hospital and for the first week or so after he'd been allowed home he'd had a constant stream of callers, to the point where he'd wanted to yell at them to leave him alone. Small talk was a struggle for him at the best of times and he'd had no patience for it at all then. Catherine had spotted it and begun to weed out the worst culprits, the sheriff, under-sheriff, lab director and even Ecklie had all been given good excuses not to visit one way or another, which on the whole they'd gratefully accepted. She'd even managed to dissuade Hodges from coming, eager to keep his boss up to date with the lab news (or was that gossip?). Grissom might have been annoyed as the trace technician tried to reach new heights in sycophancy, but with hindsight he had to admit that probably the first time he'd found anything funny after he lost his sight had been when he'd overheard Nick and Warrick debating whether to set up a sweepstake on how long it would take Hodges to get around to buying himself a harness and offering his services as a seeing eye dog. Sara's visits hadn't been a problem though. Just as he would have done she'd coped with the injuring of her friend by throwing herself into investigating his case, and most of his encounters with her had been like the previous night, and related to work, if not his specific case. He could handle that, and at least they had something to talk about. Jim Brass had also kept his visits mainly work related, and Al Robbins had been understanding from the start, visiting a couple of times to reassure him of his support, then stepping back and telling him to call him whenever he needed to.

Thinking about it, the only person he hadn't seen (hell, he hadn't _seen_ anyone)... The only person who hadn't seen him, since the night he lost his sight was Greg Sanders. Grissom felt regret about that, because Greg was the last person he actually _had_ seen, and he needed to talk with Greg about that night, and thank him.

-----

Arriving back from processing the site where his D.B. had been dumped, Nick headed directly to the morgue. Doc. Robbins wouldn't have had time to do a full autopsy yet, but he might have some preliminary findings and Nick needed to know if this victim had been murdered or not.

The Coroner, careful as always to remind Nick that any preliminary findings were subject to change with the full autopsy, was pretty certain that this was indeed another victim in the series.

"Pinprick size pupils, slight blistering of the eyelids, inflammation of the optic nerve and the blood shot whites all match what was observed in Grissom in the first couple of days after he was attacked. Injuries to the throat and scalp two inches behind the left ear match those found on Miss Harris, as do the marks from restraint on his wrists. I'd say this was done by the same guy."

"I can understand the injuries to the throat as a way to prevent the vic. talking," said Nick, "but I don't get what he's trying to do round there." He pointed a gloved finger at the scalp wound.

"It is interesting. The part of the brain underneath this point is known as Broca's Area. It's one of the speech centres of the brain. You could call it the output, as damage to it does not affect understanding of language, but does handicap the victim's ability to convert their thoughts to language, not just as speech, but in any form involving words. I've contacted the hospital to check whether Miss Harris has been affected this way. Another point of interest, in Miss Harris' statement to Sara and Gil she says that her vocal chords were injured first, and the trepanning, that is having a hole bored in her skull, happened later. Judging by the amount of healing our new vic. had this happen the other way round.

"If I was looking at this from a purely medical point of view this way makes more sense. In neurosurgery it's not uncommon for the patient to remain awake, at least for the first part of an operation. Any mapping of the human brain is general at best, we're all wired a little differently, and it's easier to check that you're working on the right bit of brain if your patient is awake and can tell you of any sensations they're getting."

The Doc looked up and noticed Nick was looking a little pale. "Done properly, it's not as bad for the patient as it might sound, once inside the skull there are no pain sensors to cause any discomfort."

"Anyway this guy may have decided to perform his 'procedures' in this order so he could monitor the effects of the first, before masking them by the second.

"We have one other difference from Miss Harris," Doc Robbins turned the victims head to the left exposing the right ear. A trail of dried blood traced a path from inside and down the victim's neck. "He was starting some sort of work here when he stopped, maybe it was at this point he realised his 'patient' wasn't going to make it. I can't give you a C.o.D. yet, but this leads me to believe the man's death was accidental, not a deliberate act of murder."

"Thanks, Doc."

Nick went on to the lab and dropped of what little evidence he had from the body dump site to trace and DNA. The victim's driver's licence had been found in his pocket and Nick printed off a large scale copy of that and some of his crime scene photos before heading along to the layout room.

Now that the team were dealing with multiple victims several boards had been set up around the walls. The first had details of Grissom's attack on it, the second those from that on Anne Harris. Nick strode over to the third and began to stick up the pictures he'd bought with him.

"So, he's done it again." Nick jumped when he heard Greg speak. Turning he saw the younger CSI slumped in a chair on the opposite side of the room.

"Greggo! You shouldn't be here, please don't tell me you've caught Sara's overtime bug!"

"No, I'm strictly off the clock, but I thought I'd come in, see if I can spot some commonality between Grissom and the other vic. Maybe get a clue from that."

"And have you found anything?

"Only broad non-specific stuff that Grissom would dismiss by just giving me that look." Greg ground to a halt; he'd actually have given a lot of money to be on the receiving end of one of Grissom's looks about then.

Nick caught Greg's expression and tried to distract him. "Tell me anyway, you never know, and Griss isn't against a bit of old fashioned brain-storming now and again you know."

"OK, but it really is hard to find anything.

"They're both Caucasian, north European ancestry by looking at them, both have white collar jobs, they're over 35, single, and neither are originally from Nevada. Not very much, hey?" Greg added, glumly.

For reply Nick just stuck the latest vic's ID to the board he was setting up. Henry Johnson, age 23, married, a motor mechanic born n Vegas and an African American.

Greg sighed.

"Well that was a waste of time. Still I had nothing better to do."

"You could have visited Grissom. I had to leave him on his own when I got called in here." Nick was aware that Greg hadn't been to see their boss, but couldn't work out why. "He's still Grissom, he may be a little down sometimes, but his personality hasn't suddenly changed. I'm sure he'd appreciate it if you called around."

"No he wouldn't. I can never relax around him, and that means I do stuff which irritates him, and when I see that look on his face I just get more and more nervous and start to ramble on making things even worse." It was an old excuse and one that both Greg and Nick knew was no longer as true as it had once been, but Greg hoped it would be good enough to stop the dark haired man pressuring him.

Greg had been badly frightened the night Grissom lost his sight. He'd had to cope with his boss alone for nearly forty minutes before the ambulance had reached their isolated location, dropping his cell phone immediately after calling for medical assistance to concentrate on his boss, he hadn't even been able to take time to contact the Highway Patrolmen who had been redirecting traffic around the section of road blocked off for a mile in each direction from the truck crash they had been processing. The first they had known there was a problem had been when the ambulance crew turned up. Greg wasn't sure how Grissom would feel about what Greg had done to try and keep him safe that night, and was trying to avoid finding out for as long as possible.

Nick seemed to be reading at least some of his thoughts. "You did a lot for him when it happened, I'm sure he appreciates that."

"I managed to dial 911 in the right order. Yey Greg."

Nick knew that Greg had done far more than that. A female EMT had been in attendance and, of course, she had a soft spot for Nick. She'd told him how they'd arrived at the scene to find Greg sitting on the ground behind Grissom trying to both support the larger man and pin his arms to his sides whilst trying to talk to the Grissom and calm him down. Grissom had been screaming, though his voice was growing hoarse, and desperately trying to get his hands free and up to his face, but Greg hadn't let him. The few scratches already there from before Greg had managed to reach him were evidence of the damage that Grissom might have done to himself had Greg not fought him all the way.

Nick thought Greg was a hero, but if his young friend couldn't see it that way he wouldn't push it, not yet anyway.

"Come on, I've done all I can for now, and you're not even supposed to be in. How about we call it a day and I'll buy you lunch." Nick put a companionable arm around the younger man's shoulders and steered him from the room.

**A/N **This has taken a while longer to write than my other chapters. I thought it was about time I put some _proper _CSI stuff in, and I wanted it to be right, or we might never find out what happened to poor old Grissom. There will be more in the next chapter too, so if you've any constructive criticism to give, now is the time. Don't worry, I don't mind if you have something negative to say, as long as you're telling me how to make it right - that's the _constructive_ bit! Doesn't mean I don't want the positive reviews too, though. Many thanks to those who have supported me so far.


	5. Chapter 5

I make no claim to own CSI, the characters or any of the situations therein, I write in homage, with no intent to steal.

**Senseless**

Just over ten hours later Greg and Nick were back in the layout room and were quickly joined by Sara and Warrick. In view of the escalation in the situation, Catherine had decided to call a case conference before splitting the team up to head out on their night's work. As each attack had initially been investigated as a separate crime different members of the shift had different perspectives and it made sense to get them all together while she was able.

Catherine herself was sitting in Grissom's office. Despite protocol, circumstances had combined to result in Grissom's team investigating a crime perpetrated on their supervisor. If they managed to catch this man then they would have to make sure everything they passed on to the courts was unquestionable to avoid any claim of bias which might compromise the case. To do that Catherine knew she had to project the same level of professionalism and detachment that Grissom himself would have maintained in the circumstances. Projecting an impression would be as near as she was likely to get, though. She'd come directly into the lab from Grissom's home, after typing an e-mail to his mother for him. Even though she'd been concentrating on the computer screen she'd heard the strain in Grissom's voice. Having to use a third party to reach his mother, even someone who had known him as long as Catherine had, was putting more stress on her friend than he needed right now.

Catherine stood up. However she might be feeling now wasn't the time to wallow. Lifting her chin up she strode out of the office and along the corridor to the layout room.

Noting that everyone else was present Catherine explained the reason for the meeting, then began with her own bad news.

"We have no physical evidence for the first attack. Some kind of intense light was used on Grissom, which meant physical contact was unnecessary and our perp. took advantage of that. We've also been unable to locate where the light originated from, Grissom was too disoriented immediately afterwards to give us a direction, and Greg, who was the only other person nearby didn't see anything."

"I should have seen _something_," groaned Greg, "so much for being a trained observer. I suck."

"No, you don't." Catherine was quick to quash Greg's self criticism. "For a light beam to do what it did to Grissom it must have been tightly focussed. If you'd been looking directly at him you might have seen it light up his face, but you still wouldn't have seen the source unless you'd been between the two, and then you might have lost your sight too. You were there to process the scene, not to baby-sit Grissom, and that's what you were doing, you have nothing to blame yourself for.

"Any way," Catherine returned to her original track, "A team of cadets searched the area for some time, but as its scrubland and we have no specific region to concentrate manpower on, it's no surprise they didn't find anything.

"Sara, can you give us an overview of what you have on the second attack?"

Sara had more to say about her case, updating her co-workers on the previous night's interview with Anne Harris and adding Doc Robbins' theory about the trepanning, which had now been confirmed by the hospital's tests, Miss Harris had been unable to write anything which made sense, even allowing for her blindness.

Unfortunately Sara couldn't bring any positive news about evidence to the table. Although Anne had been able to tell them where she had been abducted from, the time since the event had happened meant that any evidence at the site would be compromised by now. There had been little found in the car park where Miss Harris had been dumped, as it wasn't a primary crime scene, and it had been wandered all over by the EMTs and public. A few fibres and a single hair had been processed, but the DNA was not in the database, so it would have to remain on file until there was something to compare it with. Video camera footage had failed to identify a specific car, though licence plates had been logged so they could be checked against future evidence.

Nick's victim had been reported missing by his wife three days earlier. Brass and his detectives were in the process of questioning her and the victim's friends and workmates in an attempt to pin down where he had been abducted from. As far as evidence was concerned, Nick's report was similar to Sara's. Again they had a dump site rather than a primary scene, there had only been a few small pieces of possible evidence to be found on the body, all of which were currently with trace or the DNA lab, and Nick did not anticipate any great revelations from the results.

"I think the best we can hope for is to link this case to Anne Harris's. I've just got the full autopsy report, first read through says this guy has access to proper surgical instruments, and he's attempted to sterilise the surgery sites. He has some clue what he's doing but he's not particularly skilled, which seems to be what killed his latest vic. CoD was a brain haemorrhage from the trepanning, seems the guy just bored a hole in the skull and then poked around inside until he hit the right spot. Sounds like Miss Harris was damned lucky to survive. Took our Mr. Johnson a while to die and our perp. failed to spot the problem at first. He was in the middle of some kind of work on the vic.'s right ear when the vic. died. No sign of any attempts at revival." Nick finished speaking and sat back.

Warrick summed up, "So, the bad news is we haven't a primary crime scene, victims are apparently random, all our trace evidence is useless without a suspect to link it to and even then it wouldn't be enough to get a conviction. So we have to find something else. Looks to me like we're starting to be able to infer some stuff from his M.O. He seems to be adding something new with each vic. He held Anne Harris hostage for over two weeks, which may mean he wants to observe his victims coping with what he has done, yet he lost interest in Henry Johnson as soon as complications arose."

"He's experimenting." Greg interrupted. "Sight, speech, and now it looks like hearing. Can you imagine living without all those? And what might he come up with next? We have to stop this guy before he hurts anyone else."

"I don't think anyone here would disagree with that, Greg." Catherine stopped him, she needed to keep a lid on the emotion levels in the room, and especially in light of what she felt she needed to say next.

"O.K. guys, we may not have any deliberate killings, but I don't think there's any argument that we're talking serial. We have to look at these attacks as a single entity. All our victims seem to have been picked at random. We have to keep that in mind and, however strong the inclination is, we need to take a step back and stop asking ourselves 'Why Grissom?'."

"You're wrong." Greg had been silent after Catherine broke in on his emotional outburst, but he wasn't going to let that go by.

"Catherine's right, Greg." Nick put a hand on his younger friend's arm; Warrick was also nodding in agreement.

"No, Greg's the one who's right." Sara broke in softly, knowing that her colleagues would think her to be even more biased than Greg. "Not because it's Grissom, but because it's different. Griss always says that changes in M.O. are just as, if not more important than the M.O. itself. Our perp. moved from a non-contact attack in a remote area to full scale abduction from a populated, if not exactly busy area. Was all that just because he was moving on to operate on the voice box, or did something else change? We really have to ask that question."

"O.K.," Catherine said slowly, "what have we got that might answer that question?"

"We haven't got a precise abduction site for Henry Johnson yet, but Brass's guys have looked at Henry Johnson's routine and it's unlikely that it happened out of town. Miss Harris was taken only half a mile from the Strip. Looks like he's chosen places which are quiet enough for him to abduct someone without being seen, but busy enough that he wouldn't have to wait long for a target to come along. Griss and I were on a stretch of highway around forty miles out of town at 3 a.m.. Even in the daytime no-one would have been out there on foot, and at that time of night only overnight haulers like the one operating the truck that had crashed would have vehicles on the road. So how did he know we'd be there?" Greg finished with a question.

"Maybe he knew that truck was going to crash." Catherine thought for a moment. "Day shift took on that case after Grissom got hurt. We need to see their findings. Greg, as it was your and Grissom's case first, I want you to get hold of the file and check through it. Note anything that might mean our perp. caused the crash in order to use the vehicle as bait. Warrick, I want you to work with him as fresh eyes. Sara, Nick, much as we want to get this solved, we're going to have to work other cases tonight, at least until we have more to work on.

Catherine handed over a couple of assignment slips, keeping one for herself, and the team dispersed.

It took Greg and Warrick a while to locate the case file they were looking for. To their surprise it was already on it's way to be filed amongst closed cases with no further action required. Day shift had found nothing suspicious and therefore it was recorded as a genuine 'no-fault' accident. No criminal charges would arise, and the insurance company would have to pay out.

Greg read the file thoroughly, passing each page on to Warrick to do the same. No sign of a second vehicle, no mechanical defects on the truck, driver tox. screen clear. Nothing. Greg would have liked to blame day shift for missing something, but the investigation had clearly been thorough, they had been nothing short of professional.

"So our only clue is a total lack of clues." Warrick leaned back, closing his eyes to think.

Greg pondered too, "I know I'm probably grasping at straws, but what if our perp. caused the accident in a way we wouldn't have thought to check - not at that stage any how. What if the truck driver swerved into the cliff because something distracted him, or left him unable to control his vehicle? What if he was blinded too?"

Warrick sat up. Grabbing the autopsy report on the driver he quickly read through it. "Damn, there's nothing about this guys eyes at all. His body was released for burial three weeks ago, and we'd never get an exhumation order on a theory without physical evidence in support.

"O.K., let's risk Grissom's wrath and temporarily assume you're right, and the truck driver could no longer see where he was going, why did he hit the cliff instead of the brakes?"

"Griss was in agony," was Greg's answer, "if this guy was too he'd have been more interested in stopping the pain than stopping the truck. In fact, if he had it as bad as Grissom, he might even have deliberately headed for the cliff just for some relief."

Warrick stared at his friend for a moment, this was the most Greg had said about the accident in front of him, and Nick hadn't told him what the EMT had said. This was his first idea of how much pain the man he respected so much had been in. "My God," he whispered under his breath, before pulling himself together and looking at the file again. "It's unlikely he did it deliberately, Day Shift have ruled out driver suicide, though that was partly because there was no apparent motive."

"Let's try another question," said Greg. "If the perp. had already successfully tried out his weapon on the truck driver, how come he tried again on Grissom? Did he think Griss had something that might identify him?"

"Unlikely. He wouldn't have needed to be any nearer the truck than he was to Grissom, and even if he was, blinding Grissom wouldn't have destroyed any physical evidence. Day Shift and Catherine both investigated the scene thoroughly for two different crimes, and Grissom would have told us if he found anything before it happened, so I think it's safe to say there was nothing."

The two men thought in silence for a while, trying to think their theory through. Greg, still relatively new as a CSI was trying to remember what Grissom had to say about theories.

"The scientific method requires us first to observe the evidence and then to produce a hypothesis of what happened - what we call calling it. Next we must test our hypothesis - if this is what happened, then what other evidence should we be able to find? If we find the evidence we seek, then our hypothesis is strengthened, but if the evidence is contrary to what we had expected to find, then we must adjust our hypothesis to fit it. Only when our hypothesis matches all the evidence to be found, and in our case also completes the trinity of evidence required for an arrest can we take our hypothesis to be some semblance of the truth."

Grissom's mini lecture had stuck in Greg's mind, but he wasn't sure how he could apply it now. So much for the 'scientific method'. But wait...

"Hey 'Rick, I think this might support what I was saying before!"

Warrick gave Greg his full attention.

"The perp. is experimenting with this, and what do we do when we're running an experiment and something external happens that skews the results?"

Warrick was starting to catch on. "We do what we can to exclude the external interference and run it again."

"Exactly. The perp. wants to try out his new toy. For some reason he chooses to try it out on the truck driver, but when he does the truck goes straight into the cliff. Now he doesn't know if his beam was too powerful and killed the driver immediately and the truck went into the cliff as a result, or if it wasn't powerful enough and just caused a distraction which led to the crash. There would even be a chance that the truck crash was a coincidence and not the result of his weapon at all." Greg paused for breath.

Warrick picked up the thread. "So, he decides to run the experiment again, this time excluding the variables from the moving vehicle. He needs someone on foot, and he knows that, sooner or later, someone will be along to investigate the crash, so he decides to stick around and make his second attempt right there.

"So where do we go with this next?" Warrick looked at Greg.

"I think we need to check who might have known that the truck followed that route and would be there at that time. Might be worth checking who reported the accident too, maybe our perp. was a little impatient just waiting for somebody to arrive and decided to speed things up. I'll go try and find Brass or Sofia, get them to look into that for us."

As that was all they could achieve until those inquiries were done, Warrick got out his cell and contacted Catherine to let her know that once Greg was finished briefing a detective both men would be available to help on other cases for the remainder of the night.

A/N As Griss would probably prefer, this chapter had less emotion and more evidence. If you prefer that too, then let me know by writing a review. There is going to be more angst next chapter, but after that I'm willing to be steered (at least a little) by your comments, so do say something!


	6. Chapter 6

I make no claim to own CSI, the characters or any of the situations therein, I write in homage, with no intent to steal.

**Senseless**

The next day Grissom was due at Desert Palms at 3.30 p.m. for a check up. It was exactly four weeks from his attack, and that made it a milestone, so when Warrick arrived at Grissom's home about an hour before they were due to be at the hospital he assumed his boss's foul mood was down to that.

Only when he followed a taciturn Grissom into the main room of the town house and saw the mess in the kitchen area did Warrick realise there was a little more to it than that. Grissom had obviously tried to clean up, and possibly believed that Warrick wouldn't notice that something had happened, but even a trainee CSI could have worked out that something had been spilt, and something else had been broken, (possibly deliberately) and that, finally, an arm had been swept along the counter sending almost everything onto the floor. If Warrick had still been a gambling man he'd have put good money on the last bit having been considerably more the result of frustration than any accident. Suspecting that Grissom had probably not bothered to make a second attempt at preparing himself a meal, Warrick suggested that they should leave for the hospital immediately, despite being a little early, and that they could maybe spend the extra waiting time in the cafeteria.

Grissom immediately realised why Warrick was making the suggestion. The combination of his friend's attempt at subtlety and acknowledgement of his own stupidity in believing he could fool one of his CSI colleagues in this way lifted Grissom's mood. It was only by a little, but enough that he didn't fall victim to his own obstinacy and refuse the idea out of hand.

Fifty minutes later the two men had eaten and were in the ophthalmology clinic waiting room. Warrick was sitting in a chair which was low enough that his knees were almost on a level with his shoulders. He wished Grissom would sit down too.

The older man was standing to one side of the glass doors with his hands clasped behind his back. He was facing toward Warrick and his posture, combined with the bandana tied round his eyes and the grim expression on his face, made Warrick think of a prisoner awaiting the firing squad. The problem was that was just how Grissom felt.

Four weeks. If the tests today failed to show any improvement he would need to make some serious decisions. Grissom had already decided that even if there was a little change he would accept the offer of an orientation course. Even if he wasn't going to be permanently blind the chances of him regaining full use of his sight must be shrinking with every day that passed.

"Mr. Grissom?" Warrick settled himself to wait as a nurse led his friend away.

Grissom seemed to be gone for a very long time, and Warrick was almost asleep when the nurse returned.

"Mr. Brown? Would you like to come through? We're nearly finished with Mr. Grissom, but I think he'd like you nearby."

Warrick wasn't so sure, but the nurse had used his surname, and she could only have known that if Grissom had asked for him. Unfolding himself from his chair, he followed the woman back to the consulting room, concerned at what he might find.

Grissom's doctor nodded at Warrick and finished what he was saying, "OK, I understand your concern about that, how about I start the paperwork, and you call my secretary when you decide that you're ready for us to go ahead.

"Well, Mr. Brown is here, and I've only a couple more things to say. Nurse, would you fetch Mr. Grissom some painkillers? I think he needs them."

Grissom nodded, his face almost as grey as his hair. Warrick gently touched him on the shoulder, "Griss?"

"I'll be OK, 'Rick, some of the tests were a little painful, that's all." Warrick wasn't sure that any part of that sentence was entirely true, but he just took the second chair in front of the consultant's desk, and hoped Grissom would remain aware of his supportive presence.

Once Warrick was comfortable, the doctor continued. "It's probably good that you're here, Mr. Brown, as the rest of what I have to say also involves Miss Harris's case. She will be fit to travel in the next few days and her insurance company want to get her back to the U.K. as soon as possible. So, if you need to talk to her again about her assault and abduction it will need to be soon. The reason I specifically wanted to mention this to you, Gil, is that I'd like your permission to send your case notes with her. Miss Harris is from London, and on her arrival she'll be admitted to Moorfields Eye hospital, your notes will be useful because we were able to start monitoring you very quickly after you were first attacked, we don't have that kind of data for Miss Harris, and the additional information might be helpful to her doctors. Moorfields has a considerable reputation, and I will be keeping in contact with them, so if they find anything which helps Miss Harris I'll be able to try it for you."

"Then I would be both churlish and unwise to refuse." Warrick had to smile a little; Grissom was the only guy he knew who would use the word 'churlish' as part of a regular conversation.

At that point the nurse returned with some tablets and a glass of water, which Grissom accepted gratefully.

"I was going to go visit Miss Harris today," Grissom resumed after a moment, "but I think I just want to go home. I don't think a visit would be much fun for either of us right now."

"Personally I think it would do you both some good," contradicted the ophthalmologist. "Miss Harris had her dressings removed earlier and I think she'd be glad of any company right now. The lights are right down in her room, and I think you'd benefit from sitting in there for a while with your bandanna off, it will give those painkillers time to work before Mr. Brown drives you home."

"_Any_ company?" Grissom struggled hard to produce a wry smile. "How can I refuse?" He got to his feet and held out his hand. "Thank you, John. I'll let you know my decision as soon as I know what it is."

The doctor stood and shook Grissom's hand. "Make an appointment for two weeks time before you leave, by then you'll probably know when you'll be going on the AFB course. Don't hesitate to come in sooner if you notice any changes."

Warrick slowly led Grissom along the corridor to Anne's room. "So, do you want to tell me about this decision you're supposed to make? Maybe discussing it with someone will help." Warrick knew the answer would be negative, but still felt he wanted to ask. He was surprised by Grissom's response.

"Apparently I would gain some advantage from being declared legally blind. Obviously that would be rescinded if things change significantly, but for the people who run the lab it would pretty much be the equivalent of me handing in my resignation. Whatever might happen afterwards, once my blindness has gone on record in that way there will always be some doubt about my sight, either with management or in court."

"I understand about court, remember I was there last week when you had to give evidence in the Jones case." The D.A. had spent a lot of time explaining to the jury that Grissom had lost his sight after that case was investigated, and that it wasn't the result of a degenerative condition which might have already been affecting him, but the defence had still tried to put doubt in the jury's minds, drawing attention to Grissom's blindness by making pointed comments such as ''We wont ask you to confirm that the initials on the evidence bags are yours.' "As for the Director and the Sheriff, isn't there a law or something that they have to at least try and find you alternative work and provide any equipment you might need?"

"CSI classes as a police job and those are exempt.

"Warrick, I need time to think about this, and I'm asking you not to mention it to anyone until I've made a decision, some of the team are even further from accepting this than I am and just won't want to hear about it. Also, if Ecklie even gets a sniff at this, he'll have the entire contents of my office packed and delivered to my house within hours."

"I won't say a word, but any time you need me, Griss, I'm right here." Although he had to admit he was probably one of those with the acceptance problems.

Grissom's response was quiet but clear, "I know, 'Rick, and I hope you realise how much that means to me."

Warrick was shocked by the candour with which his boss had been speaking in the last few minutes, and was almost relieved that the two had now reached Anne Harris' room. He needed time to absorb what had been said.

The lights were so low in the hospital room that Warrick could only see a little himself. He made sure Grissom was settled in the bedside chair, then left, saying he'd be back in about half an hour, and offering to make Grissom's next appointment while he was away. Grissom assented, and the African American left the room.

Grissom removed his bandanna and sat quietly for a while, waiting for the painkillers to kick in. He had almost forgotten that he was not alone when Miss Harris' searching hand made contact with his knee. Quickly he took hold of it, apologising profusely. The squeeze Anne gave in response was longer than those she used when simply communicating yes and no, perhaps she was trying to say she understood.

"I understand you'll be flying back to England soon." S_queeze. _"Are you looking forward to being back where your friends and family can come visit you?" S_queeze._

Grissom carried the 'conversation' on like this for some time. It was only when he paused to think of more questions that he noticed the trembling from the hand he was holding and realised he'd been pretty much interrogating the poor woman. It was time to apologise again. "I'm sorry, Anne, I've never been much good at this sort of thing. I tend to either let other people talk themselves out before I say anything, or find a pet topic and go on about it until I notice the person I'm talking to is starting to get a glazed expression. I guess neither of those strategies can be applied here."

Anne squeezed twice, _no_.

"Maybe I should try and just talk for a bit?" _yes_ "Only I'm not sure what. I don't suppose you've much interest in bugs and other insects?" _no._

Grissom paused, trying to think. Anne's hand slipped out of his and followed a path up his arm across his shoulder and up to his face. Gently she sought out his eyes, before moving down to his mouth. Carefully she moved his lips as if he was speaking, and then moved to touch around his eyes once more.

"You want me to talk about not being able to see? Grissom lifted his own hand to his face, taking hold of Anne's hand again so he could feel her response, _yes._

Well, he supposed, it is the one thing we know we have in common. He wasn't supposed to talk to her about how he lost his sight, but there were other things he could talk about, stuff he hadn't spoken to anyone else about, emotional things. Somehow he was ready to talk to Anne when he hadn't been able to with anyone else. Maybe because she was the only living person to have gone through the same things (and more), than he had, maybe because she couldn't interrupt him with questions he didn't want to answer, or maybe it was because he'd probably never have to speak to her again. Whatever it was, Grissom was ready to talk.

It was the first day that Anne was without her dressings, and Grissom started with his own memories of the same thing. He spoke about the hope he'd had that, despite the doctor's cautions, he'd be able to see just fine as soon as the dressings came off. How even now he held on to the moment between waking and opening his eyes, because in that brief time there was hope. And he spoke of how he dreaded the day when he woke up and even that vague hope was gone.

Aware that these musings were not exactly comforting, Grissom began to gently stroke Anne's hands while he talked. His fingertips brushed the light bandages around her wrists.

"These wounds are not just from trying to escape, are they?" The memory came back of the first time he was aware of waking up in hospital. He'd roused to find his eyes covered in bandages and his arms secured to the bed. His last memory before that had been the flash of light and intense pain, and he'd panicked, thinking he must be being held hostage. Then Catherine had spoken soothingly and taken hold of one of his tethered hands, explaining how they'd tried to reduce his sedation several times over the previous two days, but he'd always fought so hard to scratch at his eyes he'd needed to be restrained for his own safety. The restraints were padded and not too uncomfortable and were removed within an hour or two once it was clear Grissom was lucid and in control of himself. He tried not to imagine what it had been like for Anne, without drugs and bound with something that had apparently caused a great deal of damage when she'd struggled against it.

Anne didn't have to imagine, Grissom could hear small whimpering sounds coming from the bed. He moved closer.

Returning a few minutes later, Warrick opened the door to Anne's room carefully to avoid letting in too much light. He was stunned to see Anne half out of bed, held tightly in Grissom's arms with her head resting on his chest. Grissom was whispering something to her and occasionally the woman's body shook with a small sob.

The crack of light from the doorway hit Grissom's face at such an angle that it reflected back from two tiny points that were slowly moving down his cheek. Warrick's shock deepened as he realised that his long time friend and mentor was crying too.

Quickly, but making as little noise as possible, the tall CSI retreated from the room. Grabbing a nearby chair he placed himself on guard by the door of the private room. He wanted to give Grissom and Anne time to work this through. Politely but firmly he persuaded an approaching nurse to come back in another ten minutes, he intended go back in a few minutes before that to give Grissom a chance to compose himself before anyone else saw him like that.

Gil Grissom stroked the soft hair beneath his hand, a gesture which he suspected was calming him just as much as the woman in his arms. Anne was quiet now, and he'd stopped trying to calm her with his voice. Instead he sat silently, contemplating physical comfort and barriers.

How long had it been since he'd last offered this kind of comfort freely to someone he wasn't actually in a relationship with? Suddenly it came to him, Holly Gribbs. He'd given her a hug when she'd freaked out at her first autopsy, hadn't even stopped to think about it first. Come to think, hadn't he yelled at a few corpses too? Then she'd died, he'd been promoted to supervisor and the first barrier had snapped into place. The wall had been reinforced as both rejection and a heavy feeling of responsibility started to inhibit his old personality. A whole new wall of bricks had been gradually added as his hearing began to fail. Grissom was well aware that some psychologists would find it interesting that, just after surgery had removed that second barrier, he'd decided to grow a beard to 'hide behind'. Barbed wire to replace the fallen wall?

By the time Sara had broken down and told him about her parents it had been all he could do just to offer her his hand. Lady Heather had turned to him when he'd caught her whipping the man who'd murdered her daughter but, he had to admit, when he'd put his arms around her, he'd been thinking about stopping her breaking away and picking the whip up again.

Sara had changed some of that, and he'd almost managed to become the old Gil, at home at least. Even after they'd split both he and Sara had fought hard to stop those barriers going back up, although it had been tempting after what happened with the Miniature Killer.

And now he was blind.

Still, Anne seemed to be finding some comfort from him, maybe there was a chance that he could keep this new fence at a manageable height and there seemed to be plenty of people trying to look over it.

Warrick was one of them. Unable to leave it any longer he went back into Anne's room, making a little more noise this time. Grissom looked up, but Anne didn't move. Checking on her, Warrick realised she was asleep. He let Grissom know this, then gently moved the tiny figure back onto her pillows. Grissom wiped his face with his bandanna before tying it around his eyes again.

A few minutes later they were in Warrick's Denali and heading back to Grissom's place. Neither mentioned what had happened in the hospital room.

A/N I know absolutely nothing about US employment law, so I've just assumed it matches what little I know about UK legislation. Yes, I know, one should never assume anything. ;)


	7. Chapter 7

I make no claim to own CSI, the characters or any of the situations therein, I write in homage, with no intent to steal.

A/N Sorry that I've taken longer than usual to update. A couple of my ongoing health problems got together and have been holding my power of concentration hostage for a few days. It escaped sometime during last night, but is still recovering from it's ordeal. I hope that hasn't had too much of an effect on the following chapter...

**Senseless**

Once they arrived back at Grissom's house, Warrick made himself busy. After he finished giving the kitchen area a thorough clean, he fed and cleaned out Grissom's roaches and tarantula, which had been moved to Grissom's house once it became clear he wouldn't be using his office for a while - much to Catherine's relief.

Once that was done, Warrick looked around seeking an excuse to stay around a little longer. Fortunately it seemed Grissom had the same idea, asking for Warrick's help in changing his CDs over.

Grissom was quite cheered by Warrick's next suggestion, that they make a grocery list of stuff that Catherine wouldn't buy him. Beer, a few treats and, horror of horrors, microwave meals.

"I'll try and find some that Catherine can't object to too much on health grounds. We can find a way of marking on the packets how many minutes you need to put them in for. As long as it's not all you eat, I'm sure Catherine would rather you had one of those every so often than ended up going hungry."

"Sounds reasonable." Grissom replied. "Warrick, can I ask you to do one more thing for me?"

"Sure Griss, what do you need?"

Grissom's private vehicle was still in his spot in the lab's car park. He asked Warrick to collect it, get it valeted and then take a few photographs that could be used for an advertisement.

"You want me to place an ad?" Warrick was still concerned at how Grissom seemed to be reacting to what was really an artificial milestone.

"No, no, not just yet anyway. Just bring it back and put it in the garage for now. There are a couple of tarps in there you can throw over it." Grissom fiddled with his key fob and handed over car and garage keys to Warrick.

Finally, with no more excuses to remain, Warrick left.

Grissom could feel the gravity waves of depression dragging him down. He hadn't wanted Warrick to leave, but knew he'd taken enough of his friend's time. Afterward he'd curled up on his couch and slept for a while before waking up groggy and disoriented, even reaching to try and find the switch for his standard lamp, before remembering it would make no difference whether it was on or off. He'd tried to energise himself with his music, but despite Warrick just having helped him pick out a new selection, he couldn't find any of it that he could be bothered to listen to. He knew he needed help to drag himself up from this.

Reaching for his 'phone he mentally ran through his speed dial list, then hit a few buttons. A woman's voice answered, with the slightly distracted tone of someone who was in the middle of doing something else. "Robbins residence."

"Jane? Hi, it's Gil Grissom, is Al around?"

"Hey, Gil. _Robert, go tell your father Dr. Grissom's on the phone_. Al shouldn't be long." Jane Robbins didn't bother to ask how Grissom was; she was a perceptive woman and a doctor's wife who knew better than to ask a silly question. Fortunately Al picked up before the silence slipped from sympathetic into awkward.

"Hello, Gil, how can I help?" Having been through a life changing trauma of his own, Al Robbins had visited him in hospital and made a few jokes about how Grissom must be sick of doctors asking him how he was feeling. After that he'd given his friend space whilst making sure Grissom knew he was there whenever he was needed.

"Sorry to bother you, Al, but things have got to me today and I could really use your company. Any chance you could spare me a couple of hours before your shift starts?"

"Well, we were just about to eat, but... Ah, Jane is waving the Tupperware at me, looks like I'll be with you in twenty minutes or so, and apparently I'll be bringing dinner for two."

"That would be great. Please thank Jane for me, for dinner and the loan of her husband."

There was a low chuckle before Al said goodbye and hung up.

Al had been the right man to call. Even though Grissom had opened up a little to Warrick earlier, he still didn't feel he could reveal to much of himself. Warrick still called him 'Boss' occasionally and, while Grissom was unsure if he'd ever have that role again, that and the age difference between the two men had been enough to stop him being completely honest about how he was feeling.

His friendship with Al was different. They'd never been part of same chain of command, and what had started as a mutual respect for each other's expertise had expanded, as they discovered they shared both interests and a sense of humour, into a strong friendship. Although before now it had never extended into the world outside work.

Grissom knew he must look bad. After he'd let Robbins in the coroner had made him sit at his dining table and he'd been given no choice but to simply sit there listening to the beep of the microwave, the clatter of plates and cutlery and various other noises of dinner being re-heated and served all accompanied by the tapping of the Doc's crutch as he moved around.

"Beef casserole at twelve o'clock, mash potatoes at four and the greens are between eight and ten." Grissom heard the slight thud as a plate was placed in front of him. He carefully moved his fingers seeking his cutlery and managed to locate his knife and fork before Al returned to the table from fetching his own plate. The thoughtfulness Al showed by telling him what his food was and how it was arranged on his plate was a relief. He needed that little extra consideration right now. He felt... He felt... _Fragile_.

For someone who had chosen to go from treating living people to carving corpses, Al Robbins had an excellent bedside manner. Although he could see Grissom's hands shaking, he made sure his friend had eaten as much as he was likely to before trying to discover what had caused the downturn in Grissom's mood. Griss explained about the lack of change in his condition, the pressure he felt he was under to start making decisions and his conversation with Anne. He even managed to admit to the feelings of depression which were now engulfing him.

"I guess it's time I started facing up to my situation." He finished with the deepest of sighs.

Al was sympathetic, understanding the swings between hope and despair that his friend was experiencing, the kind of rollercoaster even Gil Grissom wouldn't want to ride for long. He accepted that in some ways he had been 'lucky'. Once he lost his legs the situation was immediately clear, they weren't going to grow back. The basic uncertainty of Grissom's situation could not be helping him. He reminded the CSI that 'facing up' was not the same as 'giving up'. He approved of the decision to go on the course, encouraging Grissom to try whatever sessions were offered him as part of the residential programme, _including counselling_.

"I know you see that as an invasion of your privacy, Gil, but give it a try, even if you have to tell yourself that you're only doing it because I told you to."

Once he felt Grissom was starting to feel calmer about his future, or the next few days at least, Robbins steered the conversation onto other things. Although most people would have found the subjects they discussed increasingly macabre, they somehow began to lift Grissom's mood, and by the time Robbins left, grasping his host's shoulder in a final gesture of reassurance and support, Griss was able to go to bed in a much more positive mood.

Catherine was starting the shift with another case meeting. She felt that the previous one, although only twenty-four hours earlier, had thrown up enough new ideas to be worth repeating the exercise. This time she was expanding attendance beyond her core team of CSIs. Jim Brass had been invited, as had Archie Johnson, and somehow David Hodges was there too.

Brass was the first to speak. His detectives had been following up Greg's query about who had called in the truck accident. Apparently a number of items on the truck had been tagged with their own individual GPS trackers, as had the vehicle itself. When all of these had been stationary for over an hour and far from any scheduled stop the controller had tried to reach the driver on his cell. After there was no response the decision was made to call in the Patrol. It seemed like a dead end, but Brass wasn't giving up just yet and now had his detectives looking into those who might have known the truck's route and timetable.

Jim also had more work for the team, some solid detective work from Sofia and Vega had narrowed down the prospective abduction sites for Henry Johnson down to two. It would take some CSI work to identify if either was correct and maybe discover something new.

Archie had been working to establish what kind of light source might have been used in the attacks. "The most obvious candidate is some kind of laser. It would be the easiest thing to aim and keep focussed over the kind of distances we're talking about. Grissom said the light was white, which means it was probably multi-frequency, and the hospital's findings on it's effects agree with that. Powerful multi-frequency lasers are pretty rare combined with the lower powered ruby red ones like we use. Main sources would be hospitals and the military, and most hospital lasers are designed to be stationary. As this guy is moving his around a lot I'd say military is your better bet.

"Military isn't much help to us," Jim responded. "I can have someone look into the hospital angle easily enough, but start asking the military if they're missing equipment, especially something which makes a handy weapon and they'll shut up like clams. If they're really worried they'll even start turning up here and getting under all our feet. Either way it won't help us locate our man. If you guys don't mind I'd rather leave the MPs out of it until as near the end as possible."

"It's your call Jim." Catherine was happy to accept Brass's advice on this. "Warrick and Nick, split the two possible abduction sites between you. If you can identify which is the right one then get together to go over it."

Archie spoke up again, reminding them that any CCTV footage from the site might be useful in cross referencing with vehicles from the car park that was Anne Harris's dump site.

"Anyone got anything else to add?"

"We still haven't answered 'Why Grissom?'" Sara said.

"We just have to accept that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, Sara." Catherine was trying to be kind, but she was feeling a little exasperated.

"Believe it or not, Catherine, but I do realise that Grissom was just a random choice. It's the 'wrong time' part that's still bothering me though. If he was just waiting for someone to come along on foot like Greg has theorised, why didn't he pick on one of the Highway Patrol guys? They'd been around for a while before they called the lab in. Even if he specifically wanted a CSI, Griss and Greg had been on location about twenty minutes before he struck, there must have been plenty of opportunities before. Why did he wait?"

"Yeah, Sara's right. Griss was working by the cab of the truck, we'd both been around that spot on and off from the moment we got there. Griss sent me off to take photos of where the truck's tracks started to swerve, about a quarter mile up the road. I suppose he could have been waiting for me to be far enough away that I couldn't get to Grissom at once..."

"But maybe there was another reason."

Everyone turned to look at Hodges.

"Well I'm just saying! There must be more than one possible explanation."

"And your alternative is?" Catherine's raised eyebrow was a good imitation of Grissom's trademark.

Hodges just looked embarrassed, so Catherine resumed. "Archie, I'm guessing a laser of the sort you describe would need a lot more power than the kind we use?" Archie nodded. "So maybe whatever supply he was using took time to recharge. He may even have needed to go somewhere to fetch more batteries or fuel. Sara, could you get the exact times of the truck's GPS coming to a halt and Greg's emergency call, see if you can extrapolate a journey radius from those?"

Sara agreed, managing to smile at Catherine, now her suggestion was being taken seriously.

After passing an assignment slip to Greg, Catherine brought the meeting to a close and let everyone disperse. As she reached what she still thought of as Grissom's office Brass caught up to her.

"I thought you might want to have a chat, away from prying ears." he said, drawing the door closed behind them.

Catherine sighed as she settled into what she had discovered was a _very_ comfortable chair. She was rather less comfortable with what sitting in it actually meant.

"Warrick tells me Gil seems to be coming round to the idea his sight loss might be permanent."

"Does that bother you like it's bothering me?" Jim wanted to know.

"Oh I'm bothered by it, but I don't know if I have a problem with the idea that Gil might be giving up, or that I'm just having more trouble coping with the situation than he is."

Catherine fiddled with Grissom's name plate. She'd turned it around so visitors to the office wouldn't be confused, but hadn't quite persuaded herself to replace it with the "Catherine Willows, Supervisor" plate which she had kept from her swing shift days.

"Not everyone here has that problem though." she resumed. Ecklie saw Warrick moving Gil's car from the parking lot earlier. He asked if I wanted the space, then pretty much offered me his job too. I told him I wasn't even prepared to consider it unless Grissom or his doctors actually say he won't be coming back. Apparently I need to think about it sooner though, before Ecklie starts advertising nationally."

Brass muttered a few words about Ecklie that he probably wouldn't have used in front of any lady except Catherine.

"Let me know if he talks about that again. I might find myself taking the time to remind the Sheriff of how bad it would look to advertise the job of a man injured on duty before it's known if he'll be fit to return. I'm sure the press and therefore the public won't make much distinction between a CSI and a regular cop in those circumstances."

"Playing politics Jim?"

"I don't like the game any more than Gil does, difference is I learnt how to play, and I'll play well if I have to, especially for Gil. Plus, Ecklie can't take revenge on me the way he could with you guys."

"I'll let you know how it goes, Jim, but don't risk your neck yet, particularly if there's a chance Gil might be getting ready to quit of his own accord. I couldn't cope with both of you gone, and I have an even worse problem than Ecklie to deal with."

Brass was alarmed. "A worse problem?"

"Hodges. He's started to latch on to me the way he used to with Gil. He did it a little when I got promoted to Swing Supervisor, but it wasn't so bad because I didn't work directly with him. But Hodges must have been talking to Ecklie because he's got me down as the next Night Supervisor too and one sniff of power..."

Catherine and Brass both shivered. It wasn't looking hopeful for Grissom if the rat that was Hodges was jumping ship.

TBC


	8. Chapter 8

I don't own CSI, or any of the characters or situations therein - and I'm sure Grissom is very relieved about that right now!

**Senseless**

There was a time when Warrick would have flipped a coin to decide which of the two possible crime scenes he and Nick would be investigating, but now he preferred to let Nick choose. Nick decided on Henry Johnson's workplace. Although the motor garage was locked up at end of business employees would occasionally finish up odd jobs out on the forecourt after hours and someone had a vague memory that Johnson might have been doing so on the night he disappeared. Nick began by requesting the company's CCTV footage to see if he could confirm that, then began examining the forecourt itself.

Meanwhile Warrick was investigating a small car park behind a nearby fast food place. The car park itself didn't belong to the restaurant, but was a convenient short cut for Johnson if he'd picked up some food on his walk home. Johnson had been semi regular at the burger place but none of the staff could be certain he'd been in that particular night and their video was reused every few days, meaning the tapes from the night in question had already been erased. Even more disappointingly the company which owned the car park had only been bothered to pay for dummy cameras.

Nick checked the space outside Johnson's workplace thoroughly; there was nothing obvious to indicate a struggle or anything at all out of the ordinary. Knowing that a lack of evidence doesn't necessarily mean a lack of crime, Nick just had to hope that the camera footage would be helpful. Packing the tapes into his kit he used his cell to contact Warrick.

"Found nothing?" was his friend's response. "I think I may have something here, maybe signs of a struggle, perhaps a fast get away too. Why don't you come over, help me process this place? Once we're finished here maybe we can give the garage a final once over before heading back to the lab."

It sounded like a good plan to Nick, he walked over to the location Warrick was working while keeping an eye open for possible evidence, as his route almost certainly matched the one Johnson would have taken. He found Warrick searching under a low hedge that surrounded the small car park. A few of the branches had been broken, possibly indicating a struggle and Nick could see some rubber marks as though someone had accelerated rapidly from the car park exit. He checked with Warrick, then started photographing and measuring the marks. 'Rick continued searching through the garbage for a few minutes more before straightening with a sound that was half groan of pain, half pleased exclamation.

"Unless that restaurant serves seriously terrible food, can you think of a good reason why someone would drop a burger with only one bite taken out of it?"

"Only one reason," replied Nick, "and I wouldn't describe it as good. Better bag it and hope the DNA from the meat doesn't compromise the DNA from the saliva of whoever started to eat it, 'cos my bet is it was Henry Johnson, just before the light hit him."

"Well if the DNA doesn't work out we may get prints from these." Warrick was bagging a burger box and soda cup he'd found not far from the burger itself. "Okay, I think we're done here, lets do a fast sweep of the garage and then head back to the lab."

"Sure thing, though I think I'll tell Archie he needn't hurry on the CCTV, seems pretty plain that the abduction happened right here."

---

The following afternoon Catherine was trying to deal with the newly proactive Gil Grissom. Apparently he'd made a few decisions overnight and, while Catherine suspected that at least some of his cheerfulness was an act he did seem keen to get things done.

Firstly Gil had told her that he intended to call Greg Sanders. Not being a people person he'd been waiting for Greg to decide he wanted to come and visit him, but now it looked like that wasn't going to happen any time soon, so Grissom intended to invite Greg over. Catherine wasn't so sure. If Greg was nervous about visiting his boss now, he'd probably panic at getting summoned to his home. However she knew the two had to get together some time, so she wouldn't try and deter Grissom, although she'd probably call Nick and warn him that Greg might need some moral support.

Grissom's next idea was alarming Catherine even more. Grissom had acknowledged that he'd been putting off signing up for an American Foundation for the Blind course because he'd been hoping the whole situation would just go away. However, now he'd overcome that obstacle he'd realised that it had been masking other fears. Grissom was one of those people who had done well at most things he'd tried and now he was nervous that he would find himself behind his fellow 'classmates', a situation which was unfamiliar and even a cause of anxiety for him. He wanted to feel a little more independent before he went on the residential course.

Catherine tried to remind him that this was an orientation course for the newly sight impaired, and that everyone would be in the same situation, but Grissom was adamant, today he was going to go out for a walk - _on his own_.

Grissom had hoped Catherine would be a little more supportive. He was anxious about this excursion himself, but apparently he was failing to show it and he found himself reassuring Catherine instead. No, he wasn't going far. Yes, he'd be careful. No, he wouldn't cross any busy roads without help. Yes, he'd take his cell 'phone. Was this how Lindsey felt the first time she'd asked her mother for permission to go out on her own, Grissom wondered?

Eventually, having given Catherine a thorough briefing on his planned route, showing her that he had his 'phone in his pocket and, embarrassingly, but at Catherine's insistence, wearing a reflective Sam Browne belt, Grissom was permitted to leave his home.

"Don't follow me, Catherine," he said as he unfolded his cane, "if I have to phone you I don't want to hear ringing from six feet behind me." He smiled in what he though was her direction. "If I'm not back in fifteen minutes _then_ you can send out a search party."

---

Grissom's confidence was growing. He had managed to get over half way on his route without incident. Ok, so he was only about a block from his home, but it was his first time out alone. Using his cane to feel the edges of the sidewalk and check for any obstacles ahead he was moving at a reasonable pace too. He'd easily be back before Catherine could start to worry.

"Jeez."

Something caught Grissom's ankle and suddenly he was falling. He heard the crack of his thin cane snapping as his weight hit it and the burn of pain as he grazed the palms of his hands while instinctively trying to break his fall.

Feeling a little shaken from the sudden shock of tripping, Grissom sensed a presence beside him and a man's voice apologising for getting in his way. He felt a hand on his arm as if to check he was ok, but then there was a sharp pain in his upper arm. "Time for your follow up appointment, Dr. Grissom." the man's voice whispered.

Grissom flailed a little, "Wh..."

"Shush, you don't really want to talk right now."

No, that's right, he didn't.

"You're just going to be nice and calm and stay silent, because you like things peaceful, don't you?"

Grissom nodded, suddenly feeling much calmer, and yes, he preferred not to answer the man aloud.

"Yes, that's better. I've just injected you with a powerful hypnotic, fairly soon you'll start wanting to sleep, but for now you're happy to follow my suggestions. Ok, as you've had a nasty fall and broken your cane I'm offering you a lift in my car. You're going to get up now with my help and then you're going to let me walk you over to where I'm parked. You won't fuss, or panic, or make a sound. Ok?"

That sounded fine, nod again, yes. But wouldn't Catherine worry? Maybe he should leave her a clue; after all he hadn't been told he shouldn't. Before standing up Grissom used his fingers to check how badly his palms were bleeding. Then, carefully, he stood, making sure not to smudge the bloody fingerprints he must be leaving as he was pushing himself upright. The blood would identify him eventually, but fingerprints would be quicker than DNA. Grissom didn't want Catherine to worry, he wanted her to feel as calm as he did.

As the pair were about to cross the street, Grissom's phone began to ring. Automatically he removed it from his pocket, and then stopped, looking puzzled. The man's voice spoke again.

"You know that phone is a waste of time really, you don't want to talk on it because you prefer to be silent, and if you can't see, you can't text. So if it's no use, why bother carrying it around?"

Grissom just opened his hand. The phone fell to the ground, still ringing. Then he heard a crunching sound, and the noise stopped. Grissom didn't care.

Grissom's obsession with forensics was ingrained deeply in his personality, even surviving the effects of the hypnotic drug. He hadn't been told not to leave clues around, so he spread his blood whenever he could. Holding on to the man's arm as he was led across the street. Supporting himself against the man's vehicle as it was unlocked. On the door frame and on the rear seat of the vehicle when he was instructed to get in and sit still in the seat.

Reminded once again that calm and silent were good things to be, Grissom sat quietly as the man buckled the seat belt in place.

"You don't want to touch the release on that belt, you feel safe and comfortable with it fastened."

Yes, seatbelts make you safe.

"I'm going to do something else now, and you're going to cooperate because it will make you feel even more comfortable, safe and secure. Now move your arms in front of you. That's good. Cross your wrists over each other. Right, keep still now while I wrap this nice soft rope around them. All right, you can lower your arms and rest your hands on your lap. There, isn't that comfortable?"

Yes, the rope feels soft; maybe it's made from cotton instead of hemp or nylon? And what could be more secure than not being able to use your hands?

"Ok, I can see the drugs are making you feel sleepy now, don't resist, just relax and doze off until I tell you it's time to wake up."

Grissom's kidnapper closed the door on his victim and got into the driver's seat in the front half of the truck cab. Starting the engine he pulled out and began to head away. Taking a look in the rear view mirror to check on his captive he smiled to see the man's head nodding on his chest.

He failed to notice a red haired woman running anxiously along the sidewalk.

Catherine hadn't followed Grissom, but while she'd been waiting in his house she'd received a call from Archie. Like many of the night shift staff he'd been working on the blinding cases on his own time and had been going through the CCTV tapes from Henry Johnson's work place. A light coloured pick up truck had caught his attention. Its rear licence plate was partly obscured by a tarpaulin. Archie remembered that he had only been able to get a partial plate on one of the vehicles from the parking garage where Anne Harris had been left for exactly the same reason. Comparing the two images looked like the same vehicle, and that was enough to make Archie decide to contact Catherine.

Catherine remembered a similar pick up being parked a few doors down from Grissom's home. I had been there several days running, so she'd assumed it belonged to a neighbour. Checking through the window she realised the vehicle was gone. She'd tried to call Grissom, but after ringing several times the 'phone signal cut off. By now Catherine was already on her way through the door. Running along the sidewalk, tracing Grissom's route, Catherine arrived opposite a small convenience store just in time to se a silver Chevy pick-up with a crew cabin speeding away, its licence plate still partially obscured.

As she used a shaking hand to start dialling 911, Catherine looked around. In front of her, on the pavement were two bloody hand prints and a broken white cane and, in the gutter, a crushed cell phone.

TBC


	9. Chapter 9

I make no claim to own CSI, the characters or any of the situations therein, I write in homage, with no intent to steal.

**Senseless**

Grissom was grateful for his new habit of not opening his eyes a soon as he woke. It was saving him some pain, his bandanna was gone and he could sense a bright light shining on his face.

It hopefully also meant that his abductor was not yet aware that he was conscious, allowing him time to assess his present situation. Carefully curling his fingers he could feel dressings on the palms of his hands. They were a good sign, concern for a captive's well being was in general related to longer survival for the victim, Grissom recalled from an article he'd read long ago.

His forearms were tied to the arms of the chair he was seated in. Some kind of strapping or tape seemed to have been used. The bindings ran all the way from wrist to elbow. Grissom wondered if this was a change after Anne Harris had been injured while fighting against the narrow bonds which had fastened her wrists. Whether it was or not, it left him completely unable to move his arms.

Concentrating Grissom could also feel bindings around his ankles, securing them to the chair's front legs. The seat was higher than normal and he was unable to feel the floor under his feet.

As Grissom breathed he could feel bands around his chest and abdomen keeping his spine close to the chair's back. None of this was good.

His head should have been lolling to one side or onto his chest when he woke, but it wasn't and that puzzled him. He hadn't wanted to test the reason why yet, as moving his head would probably alert his captor to the fact he was awake, but now there was about to be another tell tale sign, because a yawn was welling up deep inside him, an after effect of the sedative he'd been given once the hypnotic had begun to wear off.

Grissom prepared to let the yawn out and to use it to make it seem as though he was just waking up.

That was when he realised he couldn't move his head.

He became aware that there was a strap supporting his chin, part of some framework around the rest of his head. There was some give to the chin strap, probably enough for him to talk, although it was preventing the yawn from escaping fully. However there was no leeway in the rest of the frame, his skull was firmly fixed in place and he couldn't move his head in any direction, not even by a fraction of an inch.

"All right, Dr. Grissom, it's quite clear you're awake, so why don't you open your eyes and let me take a look at them?"

"I'd rather..." Grissom paused to clear his throat, he hadn't realised how dry his mouth had become. "...not."

He felt a straw being pushed between his lips, hesitantly he sucked a little, then, when it tasted like plain water, took more. He didn't have any choice over what he was given after all, and this was buying him a little time. Eventually, unable to draw his head back, he pushed the straw from his mouth with his tongue.

"So. Why won't you open your eyes? I'm sure I can find a way to force you if I have to."

"It's the light you're using, even though everything seems black to me I know it's there and very bright. Even through my eyelids it's hurting me. Please, you need to understand, even if I force myself to open my eyes I'll be in a vast amount of pain and I don't know how long I'd be able to keep them that way."

"Photosensitivity, that's interesting." His captor's voice had a thoughtful quality. "A deal then. I don't intend to turn that light out any time soon, but once you've let me examine them I will cover your eyes completely so that the light will no longer penetrate. Is that reasonable?"

Grissom swallowed. The could already tell that the lights must be as powerful as those in an operating theatre or the morgue. Was it worth a few minutes of what would be intense pain to save him from what could be hours or even days of a duller ache, but one that was already enough to be giving him a headache?

"I'll try, he said, nervously licking his lips, "but I can't promise to manage it for more than a few minutes."

The examination took longer than Grissom would have liked, he was given instructions to open his eyes one at a time or both together and to look in various directions as he did so. Occasionally he was allowed to close both and then he could hear the scratching of pen or pencil on paper as he tried to fight back the pain.

"Have your eyes always been this particular colour?" He was asked at one point.

"Why, what colour are they now?" Grissom made his response through gritted teeth.

"Ah yes, I suppose that wasn't a sensible question. Now I need you to open both your eyes one more time and look straight ahead, after that I will consider the examination done."

Grissom breathed heavily as he felt pressure on his forehead and cheekbones as the man finally taped thick pads in place over his eyelids.

"You're pale. Are you nauseous?"

Unable to nod, Grissom forced out a whispered "Yes."

"Then I'll tilt your head down for a while. Relax and let yourself move with the frame."

Grissom felt movement around his head then felt it tilt forward several degrees before being locked into position again. The strap under his chin was loosened a little too, and something was placed on his lap, probably a bowl of some sort, he thought.

"Rest for a few minutes. Then I'll explain what I expect from you."

---

The timing of Grissom's abduction should have made it a Swing Shift case, but it was clearly enough related to the other cases being investigated by Graveyard Shift that Catherine had been able to persuade her seniors to let her team have it, even though she'd had to drag Sara and Greg out of their respective beds to process the scene.

Greg was working the spot from where it seemed Grissom had been taken. Carefully he took samples of blood from the sidewalk and took detailed pictures of the fingerprints for comparison. He also carefully collected the pieces of Grissom's broken cane and the crushed cell 'phone.

Meanwhile, Sara was working the area where Catherine had seen the pickup truck setting off. She had managed to get good foot and tyre prints and had even found a few small pieces that appeared to be part of the broken 'phone. If they matched it would be a sign that whoever had trodden on it to crush it had also been at the car, carrying the bits with them in the tread of their shoes. The truck's tyre marks would help confirm Catherine's identification of the vehicle as a Chevy Colorado pickup, with a crew cab. Unfortunately it was beginning to look as though the piece of tarp. hanging from the truck's storage bay was deliberately placed, and Catherine had been unable to expand on the partial plate.

Catherine herself was watching Greg and Sara, chewing her thumb nail, annoyed at herself for not tailing Grissom after all, and wondering what more she could have done or should be doing. After a few minutes she was joined by a uniformed LVPD officer.

"There are no cameras on that side of the road, Ma'am, but I managed to get a couple of tapes from the convenience store. They show the pickup OK and maybe you guys will be able to make out something from the far side of the street on them too."

Catherine accepted them gratefully. At last something she could start working on. Signalling to the others that they should join her when they were done, she headed back to the lab, hoping that Archie would still be there.

---

For a while Grissom had listened to the sounds of his abductor moving around the room, fiddling with whatever equipment he had in there. His head was pounding less now and he'd fought hard to get his stomach under control. Even with his head tilted forward, vomiting while unable to move was not an experience he wanted to undergo.

Eventually his 'host' came over and after making sure he was no longer feeling sick had moved Grissom's head upright again, re-tightening the chin strap at the same time. He was offered a little more water, and then his captor began to speak.

"You know, since I began conducting my experiments I've started to become more interested in their after effects on my subjects. Not just the physiological, but the psychological. It seems it was a happy accident which brought you under my microscope, so to speak. As a fellow scientist I'm sure you will respect my need to know. I expect you'll to be able to report your experiences accurately and precisely for me and, on top of that you've had access to my other subjects, or at least your friends must have kept you informed. I'd be particularly interested to find out where I went wrong with my most recent subject.

"As long as I get answers to my questions I'll let you keep your voice." The man continued and Grissom wished he could flinch away as he felt the man's latex gloved fingers pass over his Adam's Apple. "The first time you let me down I'll destroy your vocal cords. After that I'll give you a pen. Fail to answer me again and I'll destroy your ability to produce language completely." The man jabbed a finger into Grissom's head two inches behind his left ear to emphasise his last point.

Grissom had never considered himself a brave man and didn't feel like starting now.

"I'll do my best to tell you about myself, but I don't know much about your other... subjects. I met Anne Harris and I know what you did to her, but this is the first I've heard about any other vi... experiments."

"You expect me to believe that?" The man caressed Grissom's neck again, and Grissom swallowed hard under his touch.

"It's the truth. It's true that my friends also work as CSIs, but they wouldn't discuss the case with me, because if I were ever to testify in a court of law I could be accused of changing my testimony to fit other evidence I shouldn't have known about. They only let me near Anne Harris because they thought I could persuade her to talk to them. It turned out I was the first person to realise that you'd done something to prevent her speaking at all. As for anyone else you've experimented on, this is the first I've heard of it."

"Then you're in for a surprise. I had to abort my last experiment because my subject died on me. I'll get two more attempts with you. I do hope you survive, you could be quite stimulating to have around. As long as we can still communicate with one another, anyway."

Randomly a question passed through Grissom's mind - is it possible to be paralysed from fear, if you couldn't actually move in the first place? The answer appeared to be yes. He had no idea what had been done to his captor's last 'subject' or how they'd died. For once his curiosity had left him, because he really, really, didn't want to find out.

AN - I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank those of you who've stuck with me long enough to read this far, especially those who've reviewed. Special thanks to Tanguay18

who has been very supportive. More reviews are always appreciated, they really are a big boost!


	10. Chapter 10

I make no claim to own CSI, the characters or any of the situations therein, I write in homage, with no intent to steal.

**AN** I'd like to point out that I'm actually quite a nice person IRL - I have teddy bears and a hamster called Harry (picture in my profile). And I do actually _like_ Grissom - in fact I aspire to reach his level of social skills. ;-)

**Senseless**

Back at the lab the bloody fingerprints had been quickly compared with employee records and confirmed as Grissom's.

Nick and Warrick had arrived and were now working their way through the DMV database. Beginning with the partial index, they were narrowing their search against the make and model of the pickup, and the search area that Sara had identified using the timings from the truck crash cases. Unfortunately Sara's figures had resulted in a radius of over sixty miles from the crash site, so the men were left with a large number of possible hits which they were going through one by one, trying to link the vehicle with a male driver connected either presently or in the past with either a military or medical facility.

Archie, who had stayed behind after his call to Catherine, was now working with copies of the surveillance tapes. Although the kidnapper was clearly on there, it hadn't been possible to get a good image of his face, somehow part of it was always obscured by either the man's cap, or the pickup truck or, in a couple of shots, by Grissom himself. Archie was trying to piece together a number of images to produce a single clear shot of the man.

Sara was also in the A/V lab, going through another copy of one of the tapes and trying to magnify and enhance the view of the far sidewalk where the initial part of the abduction had taken place. Even with all the technology available the image was far from good. Sara was also having trouble understanding why Grissom had been so co-operative.

Once Greg had finished calling at trace and DNA to drop off his other evidence, he joined Sara in front of the screen. Hoping fresh eyes would help; Sara started the tape again and began talking him through the footage.

"See, here's the guy leaning against the wall, looking like he's got time on his hands, just waiting for something to happen. According to the tape though, he's only been there a couple of minutes. Parked the truck and practically ran across the road to set himself up in that spot. OK. Now we see Grissom coming into view. Cath made him wear that reflective belt thing, not exactly high style but at least we know for sure it's him, despite the poor image.

Right. Our perp. is trying to look relaxed, but check out his feet."

"He's almost dancing... Wait, I get it, he's avoiding Grissom's cane. He must be pretty light on his feet, surely Griss should have heard him?" Greg frowned at the video.

"Well, clearly he didn't." Sara resumed, edging the video along in slow motion. "Here we go. Our perp. snags Grissom's ankle with his foot and Griss goes down, his cane snaps and he hits the ground with his hands and knees first."

Greg couldn't quite suppress a sympathetic "Ouch".

Sara frowned at her colleague and then continued.

"The perp. follows Griss down, maybe trying to make it look like an accident and maybe saying that he wants to help. The way he's taken hold of Grissom's arm looks a little odd though; see how he's using both hands? Now he's saying something else to Grissom, but right in his ear this time, doesn't want some passer-by hearing. Whatever it is, it alarms Griss, see how he reacts?"

"Yes. Whoa. Wait, take that back to just before Grissom flings his arm out. Now go forward, slow as you can. What is that?"

Greg points to the screen where a small object appears to detach itself from Grissom and fly into the adjoining garden.

"It's probably the handle end of his cane." Sara responded. "It has a wrist strap, so I figure it was still attached to his arm after the rest had broken off. Griss waving his arm like that must've slung it loose. One of us will need to go collect it, but there's no hurry, it'll only have Griss's prints on it, and we have other stuff to work on that might be more helpful right now."

"No," Greg was certain, "all the pieces of his cane were on the sidewalk, including the handle. I double checked, even called the hospital to find out what the total length should be. I'm going back to check that garden. Can you print me a couple of stills so I can try and figure out the direction this thing was headed in?"

Sara did so and Greg was off, racing to be back at the scene before the last of the daylight was gone.

---

Whistling. This guy's about to do God knows what to me and he's whistling. Grissom shifted as much as his bonds would allow. With so little freedom some of his muscles were starting to cramp, but that discomfort was nothing compared with the fear of what might happen to him next. Sight, then speech, what could be next on the man's list? Hearing?

Even as the thought struck him, a moist pad started to carefully swab around his right ear and the too familiar smell of antiseptic hit Grissom's nose.

_Stop him, I have to stop him somehow._ But all Grissom could use was his voice, and if he got this wrong he might lose that too.

"P p please." _Stop. Don't plead with him, sound stronger, advise him, scientist to 'scientist'._ Grissom started again.

"You're probably going to think I'm just saying this to stall, but as a scientist I feel I should warn you that as far as experimenting on someone's ears is concerned I'm probably not your best subject."

"Oh, and why is that?" The man sounded as though he was only half listening as he concentrated on prepping Grissom's ear. Grissom knew he reacted like that himself when someone interrupted him while he was performing an intriguing experiment of his own.

"I've had ear surgery before. Now I have a prosthesis in each ear. Results from an experiment on me won't be the same as for someone without them."

The cleaning stopped. He seemed to have got through to the man, but would it be enough?

"What kind of prosthesis? What was your condition?"

"My stapes bones were removed and replaced with artificial ones. It's a standard procedure for otosclerosis, a genetic condition I inherited from my mother."

"I need evidence." His captor's tone had become abrupt. Grissom hoped he could give him enough information to stop whatever had been planned.

"I don't know what instruments you have available to see with. There's not much that's obvious externally. My left ear was worse, the surgeon had to approach it differently, there's a small scar in the crease behind the ear from that, but it's only about half an inch long." Grissom was sure about that one, he'd felt it, but it wasn't much proof. "If you can look into my ear canals check around the edges of my eardrums, they needed to be turned back so the surgeon could work on my inner ears, then they were put back into position. There may be some scarring visible from that, I don't know."

Footsteps indicated his abductor's movement and then Grissom's left ear was pulled forward as the man inspected behind it. Then something cold was inserted into the ear itself, an action which was then repeated on the right.

There was a half snort, half sigh then the sound of tearing. Before Grissom was aware of the man's intent a piece of tape was pressed hard against his mouth, sealing his lips. Then the chin strap tightened, immobilising his jaw.

With a muttered, "not that anyone would hear you anyway," the man departed, and Grissom heard a door being locked behind him.

What had he done? He might have caused a temporary halt in the man's plans, but what would he decide to do instead? Grissom could only think of two possibilities that the man might choose for further experiments. After robbing someone of their sight, speech and hearing, surely next would come touch or the ability to move; either of which could mean some sort of paralysis or possibly amputation. Even if his captor chose not to perform further 'tests' it didn't mean he was just going to set Grissom free, his treatment of Grissom's 'phone showed how little respect he had for things he felt were no longer of use.

Gruesome Grissom was a nickname often applied to him, usually with affection, but he could really have done without his awareness of all the macabre possibilities for what might happen to him next.

Anxiety was rising in him and Grissom found himself struggling against his restraints, despite already knowing it was pointless. Eventually he stopped, his heart pounding and his flesh sore where it had been rubbing against his bonds.

_Is this what he intends? _Grissom thought, in the silence of the otherwise empty room. _His victims blind, mute, unhearing and immobile. Nothing to do but think and no way to express those thoughts - and slowly going insane._

Grissom had to get back his self control, he'd only been left like this for a few minutes and he was already panicking. He needed to remind himself that, except for his sight, he still had all his faculties and only a few bits of tape and rope were stopping him from using them.

First he pressed his fingers into the pads on his hands, using the pain from his abrasions to remind himself he could still feel. Concentrating on that ability to move his fingers he started to tap on the wood of the chair arms, feeding his hearing. He hummed too, more sound and the feeling of the tape against his lips reminding him that that was all that was stopping him from speaking. He wriggled his toes as well, welcoming the pins and needles as circulation returned to his legs.

_Feel, concentrate, cope._

_Breathe, stay calm and wait._

And wait.

TBC


	11. Chapter 11

I make no claim to own CSI, the characters or any of the situations therein, I write in homage, with no intent to steal.

**Senseless**

Graveyard shift had officially started by the time Greg returned to the lab, feeling rather proud of himself. After a couple of hours searching he was confident that he had found the item which had been dislodged by Grissom's moving arm. It was a syringe. Greg had already managed to get a partial print from it, and after taking a sample of it's contents to pass on to Hodges in Trace he had dropped it off in the DNA lab. If the blood on the needle end was confirmed as Grissom's and fingerprint or the epithelials from the plunger matched a suspect then that single piece of evidence could be used to link victim, suspect and crime scene - a golden trinity as far as evidence was concerned and probably enough to clinch a conviction, on the charge of kidnapping at least.

Hodges input would be valuable too, not only would the type of drug be a clue to the kidnapper's plans for Grissom, if it was rare enough it might be possible to link it to a specific source. For once David Hodges had started working immediately, accepting Greg's request without a single snide comment.

Things hadn't stopped while Greg was away either. Archie had managed to complete his image of the abductor and had passed it on to Warrick and Nick to help in their search of the DMV data.

Greg had barely set himself up with a cup of coffee when Warrick gave a loud whoop. He was holding Archie's print up to the screen and it was clear that the driver's licence matched.

Finally they had a name for their suspect, it was Simon Matthews. Cross referencing with military and work card databases revealed he was a former U.S. Army ambulance technician, and he'd even worked for the haulage company that owned the truck from the original crash until six months previously.

More was to come, the name sounded familiar to Nick. He grabbed the file from the Henry Johnson case. "He's here! Johnson serviced his vehicle three days before he was abducted. Looks like at least some of our vics weren't random after all."

"OK guys, take a break, we've done good so far, but there's more to do. We have to move quickly but stay fresh too. See you all in the layout room in ten minutes, but not before!"

Catherine understood the importance of the supervisor's role in such a difficult situation and was doing her best to live up to it. She headed to Grissom's office for her break, starting to understand why the man himself hadn't always joined his staff at these times. She needed a few minutes away from them to compose herself and think. When she went along to the layout room she had to look and sound like she knew where they were going next - even if she didn't. Walking into the room that was still so tangibly Grissom's, Catherine felt the weight of responsibility for his well being settle heavily around her shoulders.

"I don't get it," Greg said, as the team took the few minutes they had to absorb their success and refresh themselves before diving into the case again. "How come he's suddenly got careless? We've got more on this guy in the last few hours than we've have in the last month."

"He's had to change his MO." Sara suggested around a bite of apple. "It's the first time he's struck in daylight, and the first time he's had to find a way to subdue his victim without the laser or whatever it is. As for the syringe, there's no way he could have known Griss would react in quite that way, he probably thought he could just take it away from the scene with him, but once it was flung out of his reach he realised that he couldn't leave Griss unattended to go look for it."

That reminder that the case they were working on involved someone they all cared so much about meant the remainder of their break passed quietly. Soon they were all assembled back in the layout room. Catherine had made a few calls and a SWAT team was heading for the address on Simon Matthews' DMV record, accompanied by Sofia and Vega. Now she had to split her CSIs between those who would go with her to that address to process anything they could find, those who would remain working on the case back at the lab, and who would be on call for other cases. She knew everyone would want to be out there with her, but Catherine's first instinct was to go alone, trying to protect her group from what they might find there.

---

Jim Brass had wanted to join in the raid on Matthews' home, but he had been on the other side of town when the call came through. He'd listened anxiously to his radio for mentions of shots being fired or calls for medics. There had been neither, and Brass hadn't known whether to be pleased or disappointed when Catherine had called to say that no-one had been found, the house was empty.

Over 24 hours later CSI were still going over Matthews' property, and Brass was headed to a possible 419 at a car lot off Industrial Road. It was the kind of call he'd been dreading since he'd heard Grissom had been taken - parking lots seemed to be the laser guy's favourite dumping ground. By sheer dumb luck his car was closest. What particular type of dumb luck, good or bad, he was about to find out. Even as he turned his car towards the address he could feel a niggling sensation starting up in his gut.

3:07 a.m. said the clock on his dash as Brass drew into the multilevel lot, looking for the security hut and the guard who'd made the 911 call. Brass calculated he had ten to fifteen minutes before whichever CSI Catherine had allocated to the case arrived, long enough to divert them if his pessimistic old gut was right.

Here was the guard, and he had a woman with him. Brass stopped his car and got out to question the pair before he continued.

Apparently the woman had been returning to her car on level 4 of the lot when she'd heard shuffling and the sound of a man grunting. Thinking it must be some kind of pervert amusing himself, she'd hurried off to find security. The guard had agreed to escort her back to her vehicle. His bravery had only stretched so far and when he'd noticed the lower part of a pair of legs with the ankles bound poking out from behind a car the guard had backed off immediately. He'd called the police without checking on the 'body' any further. He wasn't even sure if the grunting had still been audible.

Brass knew he had to get to the victim fast. It sounded as though the DB in this 'possible homicide' could still be alive, but who knew in what state. Confirming with the guard exactly where on level 4 he'd seen the feet, Brass told the witnesses to wait where they were until uniformed officers arrived, then got back into his car to drive up.

Parking his car several feet from where he had been told to look, Brass grabbed a camera, gloves and a large, brown, paper evidence sack from his glove compartment.

In cases like this the main priority was to make the victim safe and get them any medical treatment they might need. Often, as now, this meant acting before CSI could get on scene, but any evidence which could be preserved in the process could be essential in any later trial. Brass had worked closely with CSIs for a long time and he was better than most detectives at this.

Caution was essential. Brass slung the camera round his neck and put the other items in his jacket pocket, leaving his hands free to use his gun which he drew before getting out of his vehicle.

There was silence at first, but as his footsteps approached the area he was going to search noises started, half grunting, half groaning sounds which were accompanied by a sort of rustling.

As he rounded a car Brass spotted the legs. The pants and shoes indicated they belonged to an adult male. As the guard had reported they were tied together at the ankle, but as Brass watched their owner started lifting them up and dropping them back to the floor over and over, probably trying to make as much noise as possible.

"LVPD. Sir, I'm a police officer, it's OK now, I'm going to be with you as soon as possible, just try and stay calm until I get there."

The noise and movement stopped. Brass moved out, gun still in hand as he circled to check that the victim was alone and not the bait in some kind of ambush.

Only then did Brass swap his gun for the camera, taking pictures of the vic's position from various angles as he approached.

The victim was lying on his side, facing the wall, his head hidden by his body as Brass was approaching from the feet end. As he got nearer Brass could see the man's arms were bound behind him with his wrists crossed. His hands were loosely curled into fists and something white was just visible through the fingers. The man's broad shouldered build seemed familiar, and maybe some expert would have said that the heavier wear on the outsides of the shoes' soles indicated that the wearer's legs might be ever so slightly bowed, but Brass couldn't be sure it wasn't just wishful thinking. Even the curly, not quite white, not quite brown, hair he could now see at the back of the man's head wasn't quite enough to make him call out to the man using his friend's name.

Eventually Brass was close enough to touch the victim. Despite his years of experience he was becoming anxious, worried about who or what he would find when he turned the man. Even if this was Grissom the strange vocalisations were a matter of concern, what if the guy who took him had done the trepanning thing which had been done to Anne Harris? Maybe Grissom could no longer use proper words?

Carefully putting on his latex gloves, Brass spoke to the man then, gently taking him by the shoulders turned him onto his back.

TBC


	12. Chapter 12

I make no claim to own CSI, the characters or any of the situations therein, I write in homage, with no intent to steal.

**AN** Oh, all right, as some of you begged me so nicely, I won't make you wait any longer for this...

**Senseless**

It was Grissom, he was alive, and anything else Brass could deal with.

The detective was almost relieved to see the tape over his friend's mouth, because it probably meant that the guy hadn't done anything permanent to Gil's voice. What worried him more were the surgical dressings taped over Grissom's eyes. Had the perp. done them even more damage?

"Gil? It's Jim, you're safe now. I'm just gonna take a quick photo, and then I'll get that tape off your mouth. And don't worry, I'll be careful and I'm wearing gloves. I'd hate for you to get mad at me 'cos I screwed up some piece of evidence." he added, trying to keep his voice light.

Quickly Brass took a couple of close-ups of Grissom's face, the gently removed the gag from his lips, thankful that it was made up of several strips of surgical tape and far less painful to pull off than duct tape would have been.

Carefully Brass laid the tape out on top of the evidence bag he'd brought with him, and then turned back to his friend. He wanted to remove the pads from Grissom's eyes so he could see the man's face properly but he resisted, taking them off wouldn't do Gil any good and might even harm him, if there was some kind of injury underneath them.

"Gil? I need you to talk to me pal, I'm gonna turn you back on to your side in a minute and free your hands, but I need to know you can hear me, and that you're going to be OK if it takes a little longer before I get you away from here. I'm trying to preserve as much evidence as I can, but I have to know if I need to get you medical help fast. Understand?"

"Yeah, Jim. I understand. I'm OK?" Grissom's voice was weak, but his words were intelligible, even if he wasn't saying much and the last couple of words were definitely more a question than a statement.

"Yeah, you are. I'm gonna turn you now buddy, just try and relax."

Brass eased Grissom back over onto his side, and after taking close up pictures of his friend's hands and wrists he cut through the rope, making sure to leave the knot in one piece. He laid the rope next to the tape from the gag then turned back to Grissom.

Grissom hadn't moved, his arms were still behind him and he wasn't even rubbing his wrists to try and restore the circulation. Jim guessed that his friend had been lying in that position for a while and had stiffened to the point where it was painful to move. If necessary he'd massage the circulation back into his friend's limbs himself, but first he would repeat the close-up, click, cut routine on the rope around Grissom's legs.

Once that was done, Jim quickly scribbled a note of where the tape and each piece of rope had come from next to them on the bag they were laid out on. He took a final picture of the items, and then put the camera down on the bag too. Everything would now be left until a CSI could take over chain of custody.

Returning to the still unmoving Grissom, Brass took his friend's hands in his own, taking care not to dislodge the dressings on the palms because he didn't know what was underneath those either.

"Gil, can you squeeze my fingers?" There was a slight pressure in response. "You're ice cold!" Jim hadn't realised straight away because of the latex gloves he was wearing, but now the chill of Grissom's hands was obvious. Leaning forward and placing a hand on his friend's shoulder he asked him how long he'd been lying there, on the cold concrete floor.

"Not sure, he had me lie here then sedated me. Woke up a couple of hours ago, I think. Hard to tell." Grissom's voice wasn't much more than a whisper.

"OK. I'm going to call in the EMTs then try and get you warmed up a little while we wait." Brass started to reach for the radio at his belt.

"NO." It wasn't anywhere near a shout, but it was the loudest sound Grissom had made since Jim arrived. "No medics, no hospitals. I can't deal with that, Jim." The voice trailed off into silence.

"Gil, you're freezing cold and hardly moving. You need checking over at the very least."

"I'm fine, muscles just cramped, haven't been able to move much for... How long did he have me?"

Brass checked his watch. "It's just under thirty-five hours since Catherine saw him drive you away. She hadn't followed you, but Archie called her and..."

"Stop." Grissom was making an effort to speak louder again, and Brass leant forward to hear him. "Don't say anything to me about the case, nothing at all, and don't let anyone else either. It's important Jim, swear to me."

"OK, OK, I swear, but why?"

"It's important."

That didn't tell Jim what he wanted to know, but he let it go for now as he saw his friend's jaw clench, making his cleft chin seem more determined than ever.

Grissom was moving his right arm. Slowly and with obvious difficulty he brought it forward, over his side and in front of his body.

"See, moving now, so no medics." Grissom managed to say through gritted teeth. Jim moved to take some of his old friend's weight as Grissom now tried to move his left arm, which had been trapped underneath his body. As it came free, Grissom rolled over on to his back once more with a deep sigh.

Grissom seemed to have used up what little strength he had and Brass was just about to take his coat off and use it to cover his friend when Grissom spoke again.

"Are you just going to wait there, Jim, or are you going to help me sit up?"

Brass moved round to where he could help his friend sit, not sure if he should be pleased that Grissom had managed to string a proper, if slightly grumpy, sentence together, or concerned that his friend still couldn't use his arms well enough to push himself up. Fortunately, once he was in a sitting position, Grissom was able to remain there unsupported.

Now Brass did offer his jacket, but Grissom refused, he didn't want Jim's DNA contaminating anything the perp. might have left behind. Jim was still very concerned about how cold Grissom had become and told him that the only way he was going to avoid having the coat wrapped round him was if he moved to sit in Brass' car with the heater on. Jim would cover the passenger seat with another of the large paper evidence sacks to avoid contamination. Grissom agreed, but it took a lot of effort to get him to his feet and he had to accept that at least some of Brass' DNA was going to end up on him when he realised his legs wouldn't hold him and he could only walk to the car by putting his slightly stronger right arm around Jim's shoulders and leaning on him heavily.

Finally they were both seated in the car. Brass was still figuring out what to do next. Grissom seemed in bad shape, and even if he wasn't he should be checked over for a medical report. However, his friend was clearly against the idea of visiting any hospital facility right now. Brass was grateful that Grissom's eagerness to preserve DNA evidence seemed to mean he was OK with the idea of being processed for evidence by a CSI.

Brass hoped the other man's problem with hospitals was because of his inpatient stay four weeks earlier and nothing to do with Grissom having spent over a day in the hands of someone who had shown far too much enjoyment in the practice of amateur surgery.

Looking at Grissom's profile, the previously tanned skin now pale, his brow furrowed above the pads taped over his eyes, and with the lines around his mouth emphasised by a layer of greying stubble, it seemed to Jim that his friend had aged about ten years in the last month, and even the white which had been present for years in the hair at the other man's temples seemed to have spread further. Brass very much wanted to avoid adding to Gil's stress levels right now.

The sound of another vehicle became audible and Jim got out of the car to deal with the uniformed officers. He detailed one of them to take statements from the witnesses downstairs, then showed the other where to tape off the scene and gave him custody of the collected evidence until a CSI arrived. Brass then made a couple of calls before rejoining Grissom in the car.

"OK, Gil, you've made it clear that you don't want to go to the hospital, but I want you checked out, if only to provide evidence for the case." Evidence was far from Brass' real priority, but he knew it was probably the best way to persuade Grissom. He put his hand, still gloved, on Grissom's arm to stop him as he tried to interrupt. "I called Al Robbins. I know it's not his usual role, but he's agreed to meet us at the crime lab and take a look at you there. There's one condition though - if he says you need to go to hospital you go, no arguments. OK?"

Grissom hesitated, then nodded.

"I called Catherine too," Brass continued, "I told her we were coming and that Al's on his way to her. I also told her to make sure no-one mentions anything about the case to you, just like you asked. She's even going to clear the corridors between the back door and your office, so you won't hear anything by accident."

The relief that had been in Catherine's voice when Jim had informed her that he'd found their friend alive had rapidly changed to concern as Brass had added more details about Grissom's condition, her anxiety peaking as he'd mentioned the arrangement with Doc. Robbins and asked if there might be such a thing as a wheelchair lying around the lab that Grissom could use. Brass hadn't tried to reassure her, she'd have spotted he was lying to her even from the other end of the 'phone.

"OK, let's go then." Brass shifted the vehicle into drive and headed for the down ramp. At level two he saw a CSI Denali on its way up. Catherine had told Brass that she'd assigned Nick to the 419 call, and Jim knew the Texan would be upset that he hadn't had chance to see that Grissom was alive and safe for himself, but Brass had only one priority right now, it was sitting right next to him and went by the name of Doctor Gilbert Grissom.

TBC


	13. Chapter 13

I make no claim to own CSI, the characters or any of the situations therein, I write in homage, with no intent to steal.

Senseless

Catherine sped around the corridors of the Crime Lab, she was trying to do at least three things at once, but fortunately being a single mother had left her easily capable of that. Unfortunately her hurried "Not now Hodges." hadn't stopped the fourth thing to deal with following along behind her.

She'd already managed to grab a wandering security officer to clear the way to Grissom's office and sent Greg off to locate the old wheelchair they kept around for experimental purposes and bring it down to the door by the parking lot. Now Catherine was looking for Warrick.

At last she found him in the secondary layout room with Sara, going over evidence from one of the few non-related cases that the CSI were trying to keep on top of along side their investigation into Grissom's attacker.

"Guys? I just had a call from Brass. Grissom's safe. It's a long story, but Jim's bringing him here to be processed. Warrick, get your kit together and set up in Grissom's office, he'll be more comfortable there and I'm sure there are some spare clothes around he can change into when you bag what he's wearing now. One thing though, Jim says Griss is insisting that it's important that no-one gives him any information of any sort about the case. Until we know why let's respect that. YES, WHAT IS IT Hodges?" Catherine swung to face the man, who was still loitering trying to get her attention,

"I just thought you might need to hear these results in case it affects how you handle the boss." Hodges started, almost timid after Catherine yelled. _Grissom understood me and he _never_ shouted_, he was thinking. "The drug in the syringe? It's probably some kind of a hypnotic. The components are similar to several that are available, but not quite a match to any on the licensed pharmaceuticals list. I'm checking it against drugs still under development, but it might take a while, most of that stuff's top secret and those guys do not know how to share."

"Thanks, Hodges." Catherine was calmer now, but not quite ready to apologise. "Warrick, once the Doc. has taken the blood samples get them to Hodges fast, we need to find out if that stuff is still in Grissom's system."

"Will do." Warrick left in search of his kit, closely followed by Hodges who intended to lurk in his own lab until those samples arrived.

Once the men had gone Sara turned on Catherine.

"So, how come I'm not good enough to process Grissom? You think I can't be trusted not to fling my arms around him and hug him as soon as I see him?"

"Well, I certainly don't trust myself not to, and from what Jim says we'd probably knock the poor guy over. You know protocol, Sara, male victims get processed by male CSIs, so let Grissom have the dignity we'd give any other man in his position. Nick's out and Greg's not experienced enough, so that means Warrick. You know he'll do a good job, so stop getting worked up. You and I will have to wait until Grissom's ready to see us, and that might take a while, it sound's like he's pretty broken up right now, though I bet he isn't admitting it."

Sara remained tense for a moment, than relaxed. "Sorry, Cath, I shouldn't have reacted like that, I guess I just ruined any chance of claiming that I'm totally able to control my emotions on this case."

"None of us are," smiled Catherine, "I think I just scared Hodges half to death. I'll apologise to him later."

"Don't you dare!" Sara grinned. "Lets go set up so we can process Griss' clothing as soon as its available, it might help both of us to deal a little better."

---

Jim drew into the nearest parking space to the Crime Lab doors that he could find. It was only as he was walking around the car to get to the passenger side that he realised it was Grissom's usual spot. Looking over to the lighted doorway he could see Warrick Brown's distinctive silhouette, with a wheelchair parked beside him. Jim beckoned the man over, then bent to open the car door, feeling a wave of heat from inside as he did so.

"Gil, Warrick's just coming over and he's found a wheelchair somewhere. You think you can get out OK, or do you want to wait 'til he gets over here so we can both help you?"

"I'll try now." Grissom was still not talking much, but he'd been moving around a little more on the drive over, even if his left arm still wasn't working as well as his right.

His legs weren't working too well yet either and Brass was glad he'd thought to ask about a wheelchair as he tried to help Grissom stay upright, braced against the car. Thankfully, Warrick was quickly there with the chair and helped Jim get Grissom into it, both men sharing concerned looks as Grissom used his right hand to move the left one over to rest on his lap. The sooner Al Robbins started to check him over, the better.

"Hey Griss, it's good to have you back, man."

"'Rick." Grissom was distracted, the last time he'd been in this place he'd never dreamed that he wouldn't return for weeks and even his worst nightmare wouldn't have told him that when he did he'd need a wheelchair or be unable to see. The thoughts drifted away quickly, however, as his mind slipped back into its almost constant replay of the events of the previous day and a half and he got lost again in his fears about their after effects.

Soon they were in Grissom's office. Al Robbins had met them there and would examine Grissom, then Warrick would process him for evidence. Finally, if Grissom was up to it, Brass would take a full witness statement from him.

Jim left the room to give Grissom some privacy while he undressed for the first two processes. Warrick would wait outside too during the medical exam, but first he would collect Grissom's clothes. There was no problem finding something for Griss to put on afterwards. Being well organised, the CSI supervisor had always made sure he had a complete set of spare clothing in his office, in case of an emergency.

Robbins had been keeping an eye on Grissom as the man had struggled to strip down to his underwear. When Warrick started to leave the room to take the clothing along for Catherine and Sara to process, the Doctor asked him to bring back a hot drink for Grissom, to help warm him up. As it would be a little while before Grissom could dress again, the coroner adjusted the thermostat for the room's air con. before commencing the exam.

Doc. Robbins had just finished the preliminaries, going over Grissom's vital signs, checking on his general health and, finally, drawing some blood. He was preparing to move on and look for any injuries that Grissom had sustained during his abduction, when there was a knock on the door and Warrick reappeared.

"Sorry to interrupt guys, but Greg sent these with his complements, and I thought Griss should have his as soon as possible." Warrick brought in two mugs of coffee. Passing one to the Doc, he took the other over to Grissom, making sure his boss was able to hold it safely before letting go. He then withdrew, taking the blood samples with him to be processed immediately and leaving the two other men alone once more.

Robbins sipped from his mug appreciatively, then noticed that Grissom hadn't begun to drink his. Instead he was sniffing at the mug, at first tentatively, then more deeply.

"It'll do you more good if you swallow it than if you just inhale." The coroner joked. Grissom took a careful sip, rolling the liquid over his tongue before swallowing.

"Please tell me this isn't Greg's precious Blue Hawaiian."

"It's certainly a superior blend of some sort." Robbins acknowledged. Seeing Grissom's head and shoulders slumping even further than they had been already, the doctor put down his own mug and hurried to relieve Grissom of his before it spilt.

"Gil? What's wrong?"

"It's such a waste. Greg loves this coffee, hoards it like gold dust. He must have got some out just to please me, and he could just as easily have given me hot water. I can't smell or taste anything, Al, I thought I could just about detect the scent of something just then, but once I got it into my mouth, there was nothing."

"What happened Gil?" Robbins had his hand on Grissom's shoulder. "I know you're going to have to go through all this with Jim Brass, but you have to tell me all you can to help me work out what's been done to you."

"He was going to do something to my ears, but I told him about my previous surgery. He left me alone then, bound to a chair and gagged. I tried to think of what he might do to me instead, but all I could think about were touch and movement, that he'd somehow take one of those from me. Then he came back. He took the tape off my mouth, asked me some question, I can't even remember what now. I had to answer him Al, he'd threatened to take my voice if I ever refused to speak to him, but when I opened my mouth he suddenly put a cloth over my mouth and nose. It was wet, smelt acrid. I automatically held my breath, but it was a stupid mistake, I couldn't move to get away from him and he could wait. All holding my breath meant was that, when I ran out of air, I inhaled even more deeply than I would have done otherwise. It burnt, Al, seared the back of my nose, my tongue, my throat. Even then it took me a while to work out what he'd done, but then he fed me, and asked me to guess what I'd just eaten. I hadn't a clue."

"Well, I was just about to go through your injuries with you. May as well start with that." Robbins used an illuminated lens to check Grissom's nose and throat, carefully taking swabs as he did so.

"There's a lot of inflammation in there, Gil, it's going to be hard to know how bad the damage is until that's gone down a little. I'll prescribe a spray that will hurry that along a little, but I recommend you arrange to see a specialist when it's had a few days to work. OK?"

Grissom nodded, he'd agree to anything as long as he had some breathing space before he had to cope with a hospital visit. And as for agreeing to anything...

"He drugged me."

Al relaxed a little; at least Greg's coffee had started Grissom talking. He needed Gil to open up and tell him about the things he'd suffered, particularly those that Al couldn't discover just by looking at him.

Eventually Al stepped out of the room to bring Warrick in to process Grissom. All the dressings which Grissom had been wearing had been removed and kept as evidence. Robbins would wait until Warrick had documented Grissom's injuries then clean and re-bandage his hands. The Doc. would also treat the similar injuries which had been revealed on Grissom's knees once he had removed his pants. There were also abrasions from the various bindings which had been used to restrain Grissom, but none of them appeared serious. Despite his protests Grissom had had his eyes inspected once again, just to confirm that the dressings taped over them were only there to keep out the light. Robbins was not going to put new dressings in their place, instead Grissom had directed him to the drawer in his desk where he kept his sun glasses. One of the pairs in there fitted quite closely to the face and would be sufficient to protect Grissom's eyes at least while he was indoors.

The evidence processing had gone smoothly. Warrick had been well trained, thought Grissom, half proud of his protégé, half smug with himself. It also helped that the subject knew exactly what was required of him and didn't fuss or ask stupid questions.

At last Grissom felt warm and comfortable in clean clothes. Now that he was no longer so cold and stiff his limbs were finally obeying him and he'd managed to dress a lot more easily than he'd undressed an hour before.

He was tired, but he also didn't want to go home for a while, so when Jim asked if he was OK to be interviewed there and then Grissom found himself agreeing.

Talking about what had happened might help him control the memories that kept overwhelming him.

TBC


	14. Chapter 14

I make no claim to own CSI, the characters or any of the situations therein, I write in homage, with no intent to steal.

**Senseless**

Grissom started by concentrating on his memories of being captured. He could recall most of it, except the car journey, which he'd slept through. At the end of it he had been woken by his abductor and instructed to climb out of the car and follow as the man led him. The hypnotic had felt less strong by then, but he had still been unable to disobey, because his own logic was agreeing with the instructions. If he was in a place where his captor felt confident enough to walk openly with him while his hands were bound in front of him and he had what was apparently a blindfold tied over his eyes, then it was unlikely that shouting or fighting would get him help or anything else other than his captor's displeasure. Even if he got away, he couldn't see, so how could he run? Calm, silent and obedient had made sense and the drug had still been powerful enough to suppress any further inclination to fight those suggestions.

His captor must have been aware of the time restrictions on the hypnotic. Once he'd manoeuvred Grissom through a number of doors and down some stairs he'd told him that there was a chair behind him that he should sit on and wait. The seat had been higher than normal and his abductor had eventually had to untie Grissom's hands so he could climb up onto it. A moment later there had been another jab in his arm, which his abductor described as a top of the range sedative - he wouldn't have a 'hangover' from it so he would be 'useful' as soon as he woke up. At least that's what Grissom thought he'd been told but he'd lost consciousness very quickly.

Grissom continued describing his ordeal. Jim made notes, but didn't interrupt, he'd let Grissom tell the story in his own way first, and then take him through it again, going into more detail and asking any questions he might have then. He doubted he'd have many; Grissom was giving a very full account of what had occurred.

Brass focussed on the image of himself reflected in Grissom's dark glasses, trying to pretend he was on the far side of a one way mirror. He was used to keeping his feelings hidden during interviews, but he had to work hard to stay detached as he heard how his friend, already having lost his sight, had been threatened with the loss of first his voice and then his hearing before finally being robbed of his senses of taste and smell.

Grissom continued talking. The rest of his time in captivity had been divided into long periods of being left alone, with only his thoughts, and short but intense periods of questioning about his experiences and feelings regarding not only his blindness and the new handicap he'd been given, but also his previous experiences with deafness.

The man had taunted him, making him describe the most beautiful things he'd ever seen, his favourite meals, what he liked to drink and the perfumes he most liked to smell on a woman. Even as he sat in his office being interviewed on tape, Grissom's voice grew sad as he thought about the answers he'd given, though he didn't repeat them aloud and Brass didn't press him. These things were private and it was unnecessary to have them in the statement.

Eventually the questioning had stopped and Grissom's captor had begun to consider what to do with his victim next. He'd chosen to think aloud, even asking for input, and Grissom had taken the opportunity to try and guide him. He'd known that he was taking a big risk at the same time.

"He told me his first instinct was to let me go, then pick me up again later for another 'follow up' on my progress. He said that if he did that he'd expect me to find out as much as I could about the other victims and any evidence there is on him, that it's only while I can give him information like that that he'll let me keep my voice." Unconsciously, Grissom rubbed at his throat before going on.

"Of course he realised the problem with that plan. If I know he's going to try and get me back sometime, then I'm going to be taking extra care."

Brass had already decided Grissom wouldn't be left alone once he was finished at the Crime Lab, now he made a mental note to arrange for two officers and a patrol car to be assigned to protect his friend.

"I had to find a way to persuade him it was OK to let me go. I asked him if he had any more of the hypnotic drug he'd used. When he told me he had, I asked if he'd thought about using a posthypnotic suggestion. It was a risk, offering him a hint like that but I can't deny it, I was getting desperate to be away from him." Grissom's voice had been becoming more and more unsteady and now he ground to a halt. Brass noticed his friend was trembling too.

"Steady Gil, no-one here's gonna criticise you, you're the one who had to deal with this, nobody else. Now take a few breaths. That's good, nice and easy now. Tell me slowly and carefully; what happened next?"

"He obviously hadn't considered doing something like that. Didn't even seem to know how posthypnotic suggestion works. He asked me to go on, I hesitated, afraid I'd made a big mistake, and then he started swabbing my neck..." Grissom paused again and Brass placed a glass of water into his hand. Grissom sipped a little before resuming.

"I told him he had to come up with something small, something I would do automatically, that the more I had to think about carrying out the suggestion, the more chance I'd have to fight it. He still didn't seem to have a clue, kept pushing me to make a suggestion, threatening me. In the end I gave him an idea, a simple suggestion that would work."

"What suggestion?"

"When I hear his voice again, I'll drop whatever is in my right hand. There's no conscious thought required, so the reaction will be quick and I won't be able to stop it. If I'm outside it will almost certainly be my cane, once I get a new one, which means that I'll find it harder to get away from him quickly and he'll have an excuse to approach me when he picks it up. To him it sounded perfect, and it is, almost."

"Almost?"

"I didn't mention that he needed to tell me to forget he'd placed the suggestion. Now if I suddenly find myself dropping something for no reason I'll know he's nearby. We could use it in an ID parade too, I might not be able to recognise his face, but even if I'm not absolutely sure about his voice, my subconscious will be. Just get him to speak and we'll have our guy."

"Sounds good. OK. Now, what happened next?"

"He left me alone again, gagging me first like he always did. When he got back he used the hypnotic. He planted the suggestion about my hand, but then he kept going, adding other stuff, how he wants me to remember everything that's mentioned to me about the case and start repeating it back whenever I hear a particular phrase. Don't ask me what it is, I don't know how I'd react to hearing it, even if it's me saying it. Also if it's recorded as part of this interview too many people will know the trigger. Fortunately it's unusual, so I'm not likely to hear it by accident.

"The suggestion's complicated enough that I can probably fight it, but if I don't succeed then he only needs to get me on the 'phone and I'll tell him everything, without him risking himself at all. That's why I had to stop you telling me anything, Jim, and why I didn't want to go to hospital, any information I'm given about what he's done to me might end up helping him refine his experiment.

"After that he used the hypnotic to control me in the same way as when he first took me. I did everything he told me, let him tie my hands behind my back, walked to his car without a fuss, I even fell asleep again. He woke me at the parking lot, told me to lie down just as you found me, and I did. I didn't even struggle when he tied my ankles and put more tape over my mouth. He repeated the posthypnotic stuff once more, then he sedated me, I passed out, and after I woke up I just kept trying to get someone's attention. The rest you know."

Grissom let out a long breath, "You know he could have dealt with it even better if he'd used the first dose of hypnotic to tell me not to remember any of my time with him and the second one to reinforce the suggestion."

"Just as well he didn't think of that." said Jim, turning off the tape. "OK, that's one of the fullest statements I've ever taken, I'm sure there will be more questions but I'm going to have to go through a transcript of the tape before I know what they are, so we'll call it a night for now.

"Have you any idea what you want to do next, Gil? You can have a house guest, be a house guest, hell, you can be a hotel guest if you like, as long as someone shares your room. The only thing that isn't gonna happen is you being left alone."

Grissom seemed to be struggling to make any decision, so Jim relented a little.

"Or I'm sure you could hang here for a while longer. I know the rest of your team want to check for themselves that you're really here, but they'll understand if you're not up to it."

"No, it's OK; I'd like to see them."

_I'm sure you would_, thought Jim. The double meaning of Grissom's sentence wasn't lost on him. "OK, I'll go see where they are."

---

_I was right about knocking him over_, thought Catherine as she saw Grissom's legs wobble a little as he stood to receive her embrace. She'd had men claim to go weak at the knees for her in the past, but this was the first time she'd seen any physical evidence. Catherine held Grissom tight until she was sure he had his balance, then reluctantly let Sara take her place.

Sara's hug was accompanied by a kiss on Grissom's stubbly cheek, which he hadn't yet had time to shave. Grissom squeezed her tighter for a moment, her kiss, with so many witnesses in the room, had told him more about how worried she'd been than any words could have.

Jim was about to comment on Grissom's sudden attractiveness to women when there was a knock on the door and Hodges stuck his head inside.

"Catherine, Jim, could I speak to you out here for a minute? Sorry boss," he directed at Grissom, "but you did ask to be kept out of the loop."

Grissom appreciated Hodges remembering that, but he would have been even happier if David had managed to let the door close completely before he'd started his next sentence with, "We may have a problem."

"Looks like it's up to me and Greg to keep you company." said Sara.

"Greg's here?"

Greg cringed, he'd come to Grissom's office because he needed to see for himself that Grissom was safe, but he'd hoped that he could avoid being noticed.

"Come here Greg, I've been wanting to thank you."

Greg didn't feel he deserved to be thanked, but Grissom was standing with his hand held out, expecting it to be shaken. If the younger man didn't take it, Grissom would probably feel a little stupid just standing there, and Greg didn't want that. He stepped forward.

Grissom's grip on his hand felt confident and firm, despite the bandaging around the older man's palm. He brought his left hand to cover Greg's as he held it in his right. It wasn't a normal gesture for Grissom, but Greg vaguely remembered seeing another blind man doing the same thing. _Another blind man_, he still couldn't get his head around thinking of Grissom that way.

"Thank you." Grissom's voice penetrated Greg's thoughts.

"Oh, hey, that's OK; it was only a cup of coffee."

"That's not what I'm thanking you for, although it was kind of you." Greg would find out about Grissom's new handicap eventually, but for now Grissom wasn't going to mention it. "I have to admit I don't remember much between seeing the light and waking up on my third day in hospital, but the evidence all says that you must have worked hard to take care of me while you waited for the ambulance and that things could have been far worse if you hadn't.

"I'm not known for being good at remembering to thank people, but I wanted to be absolutely sure that you know how grateful I am. I wish you'd come to see me before, so I could have told you then."

Greg was shocked. If he hadn't been able to feel Grissom's hands still holding on to his he'd have thought he was imagining things.

"I didn't know you couldn't remember, I thought I'd embarrass you by reminding you of what I did to try and keep you safe."

Grissom's brow was furrowed in puzzlement, it was clear he really didn't remember.

"I, uh," Greg was trying to remove his hand from Grissom's grip without being too obvious. "I, uh. I needed to stop you clawing at your eyes, so I, so I wrapped my arms around yours and, and I hugged you." The last four words tumbled out in a rush, then Greg fell silent, anxious about Grissom's response.

Suddenly there was a hard tug on his right hand. As Greg stepped forward to maintain his balance he felt arms go round him. It was brief and over with almost before Greg finished the thought. _Grissom is hugging me._

The thought passed through his mind again, running the idea past him one more time. _Grissom just hugged me... And Sara was watching._

The young CSI looked anxiously at Sara, but she had a huge grin on her face.

Grissom's sense of humour was generally sardonic, if not downright macabre. He had his occasional playful moments, but they were rare and to be treasured. Sara had seen the single arched eyebrow emerge above Grissom's glasses as he was hugging Greg, and recognised just such a moment. That it had happened right now, after all that had just occurred, made Sara certain that, somehow, Grissom would survive this.

TBC

AN. Thought I'd let you off with a lighter ending this time! Once again I'd like to thank all of you who have stuck with me this far. Although I had written an outline before I began I had no idea that this piece would end up being so long. I'd love it if a few more of you would write a review, even if it's just a short sentence. While I'd never hold a story to ransom asking for reviews I am struggling a little with the next chapter, so any encouragement would help. Plus I don't have a beta, so if you don't tell me about my mistakes no-one else will!


	15. Chapter 15

I make no claim to own CSI, the characters or any of the situations therein, I write in homage, with no intent to steal.

**Senseless**

"We may have a problem." Hodges informed Catherine and Brass as they stepped into the corridor outside Grissom's office.

"I've been contacting pharmaceutical research companies, trying to find out which one has been working on the hypnotic that was used on Grissom. Normally it's a long process for drugs still at the research stage, but this time I got a very fast response."

"So where's the problem?" asked Brass.

"The response was two military police officers turning up in Trace. I told them that the two of you were in charge of the case and then I came to fetch you."

"Where are they now," Catherine wanted to know.

"With Archie. I thought they might help him work out where the laser came from. They seemed keen to be of assistance when I explained the problem."

"Thanks, Hodges." Catherine sighed. She hoped that the MPs would be cooperative, but she suspected the case might be about to disappear out of her hands. The fact that they were keen enough to arrive in the middle of night shift on the back of a single drug sample showed that, whatever their interest, they were taking things very seriously.

The MPs were not in uniform. They wore smartly tailored grey suits with their ID badges neatly pinned to their top pockets and their bearing and haircuts shrieked military even if their clothes did not. They contrasted sharply with Archie's casual appearance as they looked over his shoulder while he explained his conclusions regarding the laser he was looking for.

"Gentlemen? I'm Captain Jim Brass from homicide, this is CSI Catherine Willows, acting supervisor of the Graveyard shift here at the Las Vegas Crime Lab. I believe you have an interest in one of our cases."

The two men straightened and came towards the pair that had just entered the AV lab. They both shook hands with Jim and Catherine introducing themselves as Captain Harvey and Lieutenant Lowther. Captain Harvey was quick to ask if there was somewhere more private they could talk, and Brass was just as fast to suggest his office. Moving over to PD would leave the CSIs free to get on with processing the evidence coming in from Grissom's case without these strangers leaning over their shoulders, besides Jim's first instinct was to keep these men as far as possible from the man currently occupying the night shift supervisor's office.

Jim rapidly led the soldiers along the Crime Lab corridors with Catherine keeping close behind, subtly hurrying them, but ready to cause a distraction if someone opened the door to Grissom's office at the wrong moment.

---

Catherine couldn't believe it. The Military Police officers were so keen to have the 'stolen items' returned to them along with any evidence related to their theft that they hadn't stopped to listen long enough to find out that the so called 'items' weren't actually in LVPD's possession.

Eventually Jim managed to interrupt. "OK, hold it, hold it now gentlemen, please. I'm not sure what you think the situation is here, but I did say that I'm a homicide detective, and we are not just investigating some robbery. We don't have your laser or whatever it is, only evidence of its effects, and the only sample we have of the drug is a trace left in the bottom of a syringe and, just possibly, the Lab will find a trace of it in a blood sample that was recently taken from the kidnapping victim who was just released by your 'thief'.

"That victim just happens to be the guy who would normally be supervising CSI Graveyard Shift - very much one of our own. He's also a good friend of Catherine's and mine, so if you think we're gonna walk away from this you're mistaken. Besides, we already have a name for our suspect, and he's definitely _ex_-military, so while we'd be glad to accept any help you guys are offering, jurisdiction remains with us, the civilian authorities. Got that?"

"OK, OK," Captain Harvey took a step backwards, spreading his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "You said there's a victim? The stolen items have been used on someone?"

"At least three people, probably four and maybe more who we haven't found out about yet." Catherine was finally able to speak. "Initially we believe Doctor Grissom to have been the second victim. He was blinded by the laser that our technician was telling you about, as were the other victims. That was a month ago, and two other victims were found in the interim one of whom is dead. Then, two days ago, Doctor Grissom was abducted by the same man; with the aid of the hypnotic drug which you're telling us came from a military source. Captain Brass found him again a few hours ago."

"Well, obviously we need to talk to Doctor Grissom as soon as possible, would you arrange that please?"

Brass jumped in before Catherine let her temper get the better of her. "I don't think that would be a good idea. Doctor Grissom needs to rest after his ordeal, and I'm sure you'd prefer to go into this well briefed. I have my initial interview with the doctor here on tape, I was about to listen to it again, perhaps you'd like to join me? Maybe Ms. Willows could arrange for your colleague to see the layout room in the lab., it's been set up as an incident room and has information about all the victims on display, it would be a good place for him to get an over view."

Catherine managed to produce a smile and indicated that Lowther should precede her out of the office. Jim had the right tactics for now, keep these men occupied and away from Grissom until they could decide what best to do about them. She didn't need to confer privately with Jim to know that he would agree with her that these men must not find out that their friend was still on the premises. She showed Lowther the way to the layout room then left him alone, telling him she was going to find someone to go through the evidence with him.

As Catherine left the layout room she saw Sara coming towards her. Ushering the dark haired woman back, out of Lowther's earshot, Catherine asked Sara why she wasn't still with Grissom in his office.

"He was exhausted," Sara explained, "you know the signs - when he starts passing his hands over his face like he could just rub away the need to sleep? I made him settle on his couch for a while and by the time I'd spread his jacket over him he was already asleep. We left him in peace then, but Greg's 'helping out' in DNA, he can see Griss' door from there, make sure no-one disturbs him and be there fast if Griss wakes up and comes out looking for help."

"Good, I hope Greg stays alert." Catherine went on to explain to Sara about the arrival of the military police, then asked her to go and keep Lowther busy. "You've always been good at fighting for the victims, I need you to make this guy realise the effect our perp. has had on all these lives."

"OK. Mind if I ask what you'll be doing while I'm doing that?"

"Well, obviously I'd prefer it if we could all concentrate on the evidence and trying to locate Matthews before he does anything else, so I'm going to call Ecklie, give him the good news that we've found Grissom, then get him to come down here and take care of our visitors, after all, it's what he's paid for - plus that means it will be his decision whether to call the Director or the Sheriff. Then I'll check in with Nick, who should be back from the scene by then, make sure anything he's got gets processed fast, and hopefully by then you and I will both be free to help."

Sara checked her watch, 5:15 a.m. "I agree, Ecklie should be informed of the situation as soon as possible," she grinned, then headed for the layout room.

**AN** Sorry this is a bit short but I've been struggling with this chapter for various reasons, probably including the lack of Grissom : (

Though he will definitely be back next chapter. : )

I didn't want to make you wait any longer for an update so here it is and I'll try and do better next time.


	16. Chapter 16

I make no claim to own CSI, the characters or any of the situations therein, I write in homage, with no intent to steal.

**Senseless**

Even as Gil Grissom slept his mind was working, running through his recent experiences over and over again, mixing them in different ways, putting them in different contexts, constantly seeking a way to give him some peace by the time he awoke and had to try and function back in the waking world.

Greg crept into the darkened office, clutching a cup of coffee in his hand. He didn't want to disturb the man's rest, but knew he had to; Catherine would be along soon to find out if Grissom was ready to speak to the Military Police Officers. If not, she was going to sneak her friend out of the Crime Lab and back to her house. Grissom needed time to wake up properly before making the decision as he'd need his wits about him for either alternative.

Looking at his mentor allowed Greg to feel better about waking him. The man was squirming around on the leather couch and there was a thin sheen of sweat on his brow. As Greg watched, Grissom let out a low moan and rested his arm across his eyes. The younger man, hoping that this was a sign that Grissom would be starting to wake up soon anyway, placed the coffee on the desk, then went over to gently shake Griss' arm.

Grissom responded with another groan, this time there was a questioning sound at the end of it.

"Grissom? It's Greg. Are you awake? You've been having nightmares, but you're safe in your office, it's OK."

_A nightmare, yes that was it, just a nightmare that seemed to go on forever. _Grissom heaved a sigh, letting his body relax, his arm was still over his eyes, but a grin was spreading over the visible part of his face.

Seeing the grin Greg swore to himself, in trying to reassure his boss he'd gone too far, it looked like Grissom thought that the whole of the last month was part of whatever dream he had just woken from and now Greg was going to have to cope with the crash when he realised it wasn't.

"Griss." Greg stepped forward to put a hand on the other man's arm to try and delay the inevitable, but he was too late. Grissom's arm was already moving.

Even some time afterwards Greg couldn't decide what was worse about that moment, getting his first proper glimpse of Grissom's sightless eyes, or watching the smile, and the hope, sliding from his boss' face.

Grissom shifted to sit up on the couch, the heels of his hands pressed to his eye sockets.

"I'm sorry, Griss, I never realised you'd take it that way. I..." Greg stopped, he didn't know what else to say.

"It's OK, Greg, you couldn't possibly have known what I'd think. Can you see where Sara put my sun glasses?"

"Yeah. Here they are." Greg passed them to Grissom who put them on quickly. "I've got you some coffee, I thought you could use the caffeine hit, it's the break room stuff this time, I thought it was a good way to show you that there might be advantages to not having a sense of taste."

Grissom managed a weak smile and even joked about how he'd always thought Greg was the tasteless one in the lab. "Does everyone know about that now?"

"I don't think so. I caught David Philips bringing some medication over for you from Doc Robbins. He wouldn't say what it was for, but I decided to check out the instructions so I could tell you what you needed to do with it. It didn't take long to work things out from that."

"Well, I'm sure most people will know soon, it's in my interview and Hodges must be processing the swabs from my throat." Grissom took his coffee from Greg and began to drink, trying to ignore the sense of swallowing nothing but hot water. Vaguely he wondered if waiting until the liquid was cold would be any better.

"So, why did you wake me now? Has anyone decided what to do with me?"

"That's kind of up to you," said Greg. "I think Brass has a couple of follow up questions to ask. There may be other people who want to be in on that too." Greg didn't specify who, until told otherwise he had to assume Grissom was only to get the minimum of information. "If you don't feel up to that, I think Catherine has plans to smuggle you back to her place."

"Smuggle?"

"Yeah, only your immediate team knows you're still here, we wanted to keep away any unnecessary attention."

Greg's dark eyes observed Grissom as the older man continued drinking his coffee. Now the drink was getting cooler Griss was swallowing it faster and faster, like he just wanted to get the experience over with. He wasn't grimacing though, which confirmed to Greg just how complete his loss of taste was, not only was this _break room _coffee, Greg had loaded it with far more creamer and sugar than Grissom would normally have taken, in the hope that his friend would get some kind of energy boost from those as well as the caffeine.

There was a tap at the door and Catherine entered.

After greeting the men she went to sit beside Grissom on the couch.

"Feeling a little better?" she asked, gently rubbing his back between the shoulders. Gil let the caress soothe him, he still wouldn't have called himself a touchy-feely kind of guy, but he was beginning to understand the value of such gestures now that a sympathetic look was lost on him.

"I guess so." It wasn't an enthusiastic answer, and Catherine's sensitive fingertips could feel the tension exuding from him.

"How about coming back to my place so you can get some proper sleep? Lindsey would love to see you, she's been as worried as the rest of us, plus she's off school right now, so she can be around for you when I'm not there."

"Thanks, Cath, I'd appreciate that, but Greg said Jim had more questions for me?"

Greg looked at Catherine apologetically, but she smiled back shaking her head. She was actually pleased that he had mentioned the further interview. Gil should have the choice of whether to do it or not, but her urge to protect him had briefly overcome her.

"Yes, he does, but it's up to you if you want to do it now or later."

"Now is better, if I leave it, it will be harder to relax, knowing it still has to be done. Besides, you need to call Lindsey and tell her to move all your breakables; I can't guarantee not to knock a few things over while I don't have my cane." Grissom replied, only half joking.

---

Glen Harvey sat in the interview room waiting for Doctor Grissom to arrive. It had been agreed that he would be introduced by name only and that Brass would lead the questioning. Those questions he did have would have to be phrased carefully to avoid giving away his special area of interest.

The army captain was intrigued by this Grissom, there had been little background information about him on the notice board in the layout room, presumably because his colleagues already knew those details. Ecklie, the Lab's Assistant Director had eagerly espoused the man's professional and academic credentials as though he was a prized possession of the lab, like some top of the range DNA analysing machine, but there had been no warmth and no references to the man's character or life beyond his work. Harvey suspected that Ecklie did not actually like his colleague very much. However, the other staff seemed to have a deep loyalty to the man. It was clear to Harvey from the short time between Grissom agreeing to this interview and his expected arrival in the interview room that the man hadn't been far away and some kind of protective conspiracy seemed to have been in place to keep him out of the MP's way until now.

At last. The door to the room opened and Ms Willows entered, a tallish man was following close behind, his hand resting on her arm just above the elbow. As Grissom was carefully manoeuvred into a seat and provided with a glass of water, Harvey took the opportunity to observe.

Grissom's gait was more an amble than a stride, but that could have been because he had to match his speed to that of his guide. His demeanour was that of a man older than the age Harvey had in his notes but that was unsurprising in the circumstances.

The fingers that curved around the glass which Grissom was given appeared uncalloused and the nails were neatly manicured. Harvey guessed that to be the natural follow on from a career which involved the wearing of latex gloves for a large part of the time. The palms and heels of Grissom's hands were wrapped with light gauze bandages which looped either side of his thumbs to keep them in place. Just above where the bandaging stopped dark bruises were starting to develop around his wrists. The sleeves of Grissom's dark blue button down shirt had been casually rolled to just below his elbows and it was possible to see a number of marks that had been left on his forearms by tape adhesive.

As Harvey shifted his attention to Grissom's face he realised that he would not easily be able to read this witness. The glasses Grissom was wearing were very dark and curved around his face, the lenses fitted the shape of his eye sockets almost perfectly and gave an impression of one of the insects that the man was an expert in. Not only could Harvey not observe the other man's eyes directly, the dark glass also hid any lines around them that might have reflected Grissom's personality.

Above the glasses a pair of dark eyebrows was visible; there was a small scar above the inner corner of the left brow, but it was plainly an old one. More newly developing bruises formed intermittent lines across Grissom's forehead and vertically along his cheeks slightly forward of his ears, there was also a thin red line around his unshaven jaw. Harvey guessed these came from whatever had been used to immobilise the man's head for Matthews' 'experiments'.

Grissom's head was crowned by the kind of curly hair which probably needed some kind of product to tame it at the best of times. Now it was a tousled mess, flattened in places and frizzy in others and there were a number of curls that had been matted to Grissom's forehead by sweat which had since dried. Grissom had obviously started going grey prematurely and now his hair was a range of colours varying from white at the temples through silver and sandy-grey to a light brown which had probably been darker in the past.

The victim seemed to be settled now and Catherine Willows was whispering a few final words to him. Captain Harvey watched Grissom tilt his head to one side while he listened, then responded with a brief smile which only animated the left side of his mouth.

Finally Willows patted Grissom gently on the shoulder and left the room. Grissom kept his head tilted listening for the door to click shut behind her then turned his attention to the front. As Grissom's right eyebrow lifted higher up his forehead Brass seemed to take it as his cue to speak.

"OK, Gil, thanks for this, we'll try and keep things as brief as possible so you can get away from here. Before I start you need to know that there are three of us in the room, you, me and Mr. Harvey who's helping with a few things on the case."

"Pleased to meet you, Doctor Grissom, although I admit the circumstances are unfortunate."

Griss had turned his head toward Harvey's voice and he nodded in response to the other man's comment, but said nothing. On his own Harvey would have read this as either rudeness or a sign that the victim had a problem, but Brass carried on as though this was normal behaviour for Grissom.

"We need to get as much information as we can about where this guy kept you, Gil. Would you mind going over your arrival and departure from there again? You know better than anyone that the smallest detail could make a difference."

Grissom nodded silently again, and then sat farther back in his chair. Two vertical lines appeared between his brows and his lips were slightly pursed as he appeared to concentrate, but otherwise nothing seemed to be happening. As the silence expanded, Harvey opened his mouth to speak. Brass stopped him with a hand, then moved his notepad so that the MP could see it. A single word was written on it. 'Mojo' it said.

After a few moments more Grissom began to speak. His face was blank and his voice unemotional as he went through his experiences once more, but the detail he went into indicated he'd somehow managed to mentally place himself back at the scene. Methodically the witness went through each of the senses he'd had left available to him, describing in fine detail what he'd noticed with each one, almost as though he'd treated his abduction as a memory exercise. Strangely the more recent memories of his return to freedom seemed less clear than of his arrival, but that could have been the freshness of the dose of hypnotic, or the greater physical stress he'd been under by then. Harvey was still impressed, he'd questioned trained army observers who had been less clear about what they'd witnessed, but then observation was a large part of Grissom's job too.

The feeling of heat, but no sense of a breeze. No scent of car fumes or other pollution. No traffic noise, but the occasional bird cry, the sound of footsteps that may have echoed slightly, and the crunch of sand or fine grit beneath the feet. Three doorways, two flights of stairs going downwards and another two doors, the reverse on the way out. To Harvey it all sounded like some kind of underground bunker in the desert. He already had Lowther looking into any of Matthews' former associates who were still with the army and might have supplied him with the medical supplies he was using. Now he needed his colleague to check if there were any possible locations in the Las Vegas area which these people might have known of and told Matthews about.

Finally Grissom fell silent and Brass turned to Harvey indicating that it was his turn to ask any questions. Glen asked a couple of things about the equipment that Matthews had used, including the laser, trying to establish if all the items used were likely to be from the same source.

"OK, that's pretty much it," the soldier finished. He watched Brass turn off the tape machine, Harvey had one more thing he wanted to check out, but he didn't want it on tape, and he doubted Grissom would either. Harvey was a little concerned that so much effort was being invested in tracing Matthews. The evidence that he'd been shown appeared good, but he wanted to be as certain as possible that they weren't going to get to Matthews only to find they had the wrong guy. He'd done a little research of his own during the night and there was one more question he needed to ask Grissom. If he didn't get the expected reaction it wouldn't rule Matthews out, but if he did he'd know they were definitely on the right track.

"Doctor Grissom?" Harvey waited until the man turned his head towards him then, monitoring his subject's face carefully, he spoke two words.

"Purple July"

TBC

A/N Thanks for all your reviews so far, but I'd never say no to more!


	17. Chapter 17

I make no claim to own CSI, the characters or any of the situations therein, I write in homage, with no intent to steal.

**Senseless**

"Purple July" said Captain Harvey, staring at Grissom intently.

Grissom's jaw worked a few times and he licked his lips nervously. To Harvey he appeared to be waiting for something. When it became clear that the military police officer wasn't going to continue, Grissom spoke.

"There's a third word." His voice was raspy, as though all the emotion that he'd been holding in check was settling in his throat.

"But I'm right so far?" The victim nodded, his lips compressed. "Then we'll leave it at that. Thank you for your co-operation." Doctor Grissom was getting to his feet and Harvey rose too, expecting to shake hands, but the older man had pushed his chair back hard and had turned round, hands outstretched, seeking the room's exit as fast as possible.

Brass had risen too and was moving to reach his friend when the door to the interview room opened from the outside. Catherine Willows had been watching the interview through the one-way mirror. Now she entered the room, fixed Harvey with a glare that burned to his very soul and then slipped her arm around Grissom's waist. Speaking to him gently and reassuringly she steered him from the room.

Before Harvey had fully recovered from Catherine's death stare, Brass was in his face.

"What the Hell did you think you were doing?" Jim Brass wasn't a big man, but he had a huge presence and he was using it now.

"I needed to know if that was his trigger phrase." Harvey answered calmly, hoping Brass would respond in the same way.

"And you couldn't have warned him?" Brass remained standing, his fists clenched as he leaned his knuckles on the table, staring down at Harvey. He wasn't going to let this go easily.

"I was asked to check what his reaction was. He seemed so calm during his interview I assumed he'd be OK with it. Obviously I haven't had chance to get to know Doctor Grissom like you do."

"Yeah, well Gil likes to be in charge of his emotions, and that's probably how he's coping in any way at all right now. Sometimes he goes too far with the no feelings thing, people call him a robot or the 'Tin Man'. All that's part of who Gil Grissom is, and it's probably why the whole hypnotic thing is bothering him far more than the physical abuse he's taken over the last few weeks, it's taking away his ability to keep control of himself. He really did not need to be part of any more 'experiments' today."

"I know," Harvey was beginning to look contrite, "that's why I didn't make him tell me the final word of the trigger. 'Purple July' was enough to confirm we're on the right track. Matthews _is_ our man."

Jim was taking deep breaths. He still hated what Harvey had just tried on his friend, but he wanted to catch Matthews, to find out why he was doing all this, and Harvey was the key. He had to relax so they could continue working together. And yeah, the guy didn't know Grissom - who did? Maybe he really hadn't realised how much his actions would affect Gil.

Jim stood upright and reached for Grissom's chair. Pulling it back into its position on one side of the table, Brass sat down, indicating for Harvey to remain in his seat opposite.

"So, you gonna tell me about 'Purple July'?" the detective asked, almost certain that the response would be something along the lines of 'need to know' - but then Jim _did_ need to know.

"'Purple July' is the name of the project which Matthews was involved in immediately before he received a dishonourable discharge for insubordination." Harvey was surprisingly candid. "Apparently he argued with his superiors several times about what the aims of the project should be and eventually it came to blows. Really he should have spent time in a military prison for punching his superior, but somehow it got dropped and he was merely forced to leave the service. That was probably a mistake, if he'd been locked up he'd probably have seen a psychologist and we might have discovered just how unbalanced he'd become by then without all this having to happen."

"So what was it about this 'project' that was so bad it made Matthews react like that?" Brass was intrigued.

"That's just it; 'Purple July' isn't bad. You may not believe me, but the laser that Matthews stole was never intended to be used as a weapon.

"Military mobile hospitals are no longer just used for treating wounded soldiers; they're an important part of the 'hearts and minds' strategy. By providing health care for the indigenous population when it wouldn't otherwise be available we gather valuable good will. The laser is being developed as a portable version of the type often used in hospitals, with just as many medical uses, but more durable for use in the field. As many of these treatments need to be continued in the long term, the hope is that these lasers will eventually be cheap enough that they can be left behind to become part of the equipment of local hospitals as they reopen.

"Matthews wasn't on message with 'hearts and minds' though." continued Harvey. "Even though he was working as an ambulance technician Matthews considered himself a soldier first. He couldn't comprehend the idea that military research was being used to develop medical equipment rather than weapons. From what I've been able to discover he also had a number of acquaintances who were suffering from what the media calls 'Gulf War Syndrome'. At his insubordination hearing he was quoted as saying something along the lines of 'if we can do that to our own troops, why can't we do it to the enemy?'

"There are a few other things on his service record which may be relevant, but I'm afraid that they need to remain confidential, for the time being at least." Harvey finished his overview of what he believed Matthews' motive to be, then began to update Brass on what his partner Lowther was doing to try and track down Matthews' location. It was important that he rebuild the bridges which his treatment of Grissom might have damaged, so he was being as open as possible with Captain Brass.

Now that he felt better informed, Jim felt calm enough to return the favour and share his own information. Archie Johnson had been working backwards through the video tape of the parking lot where Grissom had been dumped. He'd eventually been able to establish that Matthews' truck had been in and out of the lot about six hours before Grissom had been found, this length of time explaining why Griss had grown so cold and stiff. With this to work from, Brass' team of detectives were working with Archie to go through the various traffic cameras along the perp.'s possible routes, to try and establish which direction he'd headed off on along Industrial and, hopefully, where he turned off. The intention was to follow his route as far as they could in this way, in the hope it would narrow down their search area. It hadn't been possible to do this in the suburban area where Grissom lived, but now the focus was in the heart of Las Vegas with it's multiple traffic cameras, and hopes of success were high.

---

"Gil?" the voice was tentative, hesitant, and young. Younger sounding than that of anyone who normally called him Gil. A nurse using his first name to make him feel more comfortable, even though it didn't? Grissom knew he was in bed, but he wasn't in hospital again, was he?

No, he remembered now, he was at Catherine's, settled in her spare room, but the voice wasn't Catherine's. It must be...

"Lindsey."

Griss had forgotten the talk he'd had with Catherine's daughter on her last birthday, when she'd explained to him that she felt too old to be calling him 'Uncle Gil' when he wasn't really a relative. Her argument had seemed logical enough, and he'd felt awkward about suggesting that if he was no longer going to be Uncle Gil she should call him Grissom or Griss instead. Afterwards he'd tried to laugh at himself, but in his heart he'd found it embarrassing that a teenage girl found it easier to tell him what she wanted than it was for him to do the same to her.

Grissom had been grateful to find that Lindsey had gone out to meet some friends for a previously planned shopping trip by the time he'd finally arrived at her mother's house. He'd been in pieces emotionally, even crying uncontrollably for a while, and he'd been glad that Catherine's daughter wasn't there to see him in such a state.

Now he was glad that the sleep he'd finally managed to get had refreshed him, because it seemed that Lindsey couldn't wait any longer to make sure for herself that he was OK.

Carefully Grissom sat up in bed, after checking that his T-shirt and boxers hid everything that they should.

"Hey, Lindsey," he said, running his hand over his hair.

There was a pause, silence from the doorway.

"Linds?"

"Sorry, Gil, I..." the voice grew louder as Lindsey came nearer to him. "Do you know how weird your eyes look now?"

That made Grissom smile, trust a teenager to tell him something no-one else had.

"Nobody's mentioned anything 'til now. Why, are they glowing bright red or something?" he asked, falling naturally into the gently teasing mode that he and Lindsey often shared.

"Well the colour is still the same." Lindsey was right beside him now. Grissom closed his eyes, not wanting to upset her further, "No, let me see, then I can describe them to you properly."

After Lindsey had finished explaining to Grissom what his eyes now looked like, she asked him a few questions to reassure herself that he was indeed OK. Then she told him that her mother had gone out for a while leaving her with strict instructions to make sure he ate something, even if he didn't really want to.

Grissom grinned; he had a feeling that he wasn't likely to have any more success in resisting Lindsey in her mission than he would have done with her Mom.

"Any chance I could grab a shower before you start the force feeding?" He asked.

"Sounds like a good idea." Lindsey seemed a little too enthusiastic.

"I know I can't smell myself, but am I really that bad?"

"Nah, not really, but your hair's a complete mess and unless you're planning on growing a beard again..."

"OK, OK, I get the message." There was laughter in Gil's voice and he began to swing his legs out of bed. Lindsey had retreated to the door, after telling him to yell when he needed her to lead him to the kitchen.

"Actually Lindsey, I could use your help in the bathroom." There was a pause and Lindsey didn't seem to be heading back into the room. Griss suddenly realised what he'd just said. "I need you to find all the different bottles and stuff for me and put them in order so I don't wind up brushing my teeth with hair gel or something even more stupid."

"Oh, yeah, OK." Now she understood what he needed Lindsey was quick to help, even finding a stronger conditioner than Catherine kept in the guest bath and 'borrowing' her mother's unscented hair mousse, both necessary if he was ever going to tame his hair again. She even managed to find her father's old electric shaver, hidden for years in the back of a cupboard.

Eventually a newly human looking Grissom was seated at the breakfast bar, attempting to appear enthusiastic about the waffles and syrup Lindsey had prepared for him.

Lindsey knew Gil was pretending - he rarely showed this much enthusiasm for anything other than insects. At least he was eating, though, and he needed the food. The teenager had chosen the meal because of the immediate energy boost that the syrup would give him and the longer lasting energy that the waffles would provide as time went on. She'd added crispy bacon too, as much for the variation in texture it would give the effectively flavourless food as for the protein it would provide for Grissom's body.

Catherine hadn't told her daughter much of the details about what had happened to Grissom, and her imagination was working overtime now, guessing what might have caused the various marks she'd seen. The first ones she'd noticed when her mother's friend had got out of bed had been the bruises at his wrists and ankles. The idea that Grissom had been tied up had disturbed her enough that she'd missed his accidental double entendre about needing help in the bathroom, though she'd managed to concentrate again in time to hear what he needed her to do for him. When she'd re-bandaged Gil's hands and knees for him after his shower he'd explained how he got those injuries. The real mystery to Lindsey was the marks on his face, but she wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer. For now she would concentrate on what she could do to help him.

Grissom had finally cleared his plate and was finishing the last dregs of his glass of juice.

"If you don't want anything else to eat you should use your throat spray, Uncle Gil." Lindsey had begun to call Grissom 'Uncle' again, seeing him this way was making her realise how much he meant to her. "If you want to take any painkillers you should have those first though, so the water you take with them doesn't wash the spray away."

Griss asked for some ibuprofen, his knees could cause him trouble at the best of times and falling on them really hadn't helped.

Once she had her uncle Gil fully dosed, Lindsey suggested they watch TV together just like they used to. At first the suggestion seemed thoughtless to Grissom, which was unusual for Lindsey, but then the teenager explained that she'd done some research and found some shows had audio commentaries which could be accessed if you set things up the right way. She'd found a documentary she thought Grissom would like and wanted to see if the system would help him.

Pleased that Lindsey still gave so much consideration to another person's needs despite her occasional teenage rebellions, and even happier to be reinstated as her honorary uncle, Grissom agreed to the idea.

When Catherine got home she found her daughter and best friend comfortably settled together on the couch in front of the TV. Lindsey was sitting leaning against Grissom, absorbed in the programme. Grissom, his stockinged feet propped up on the coffee table in front of him, was fast asleep.

TBC


	18. Chapter 18

I make no claim to own CSI, the characters or any of the situations therein, I write in homage, with no intent to steal.

A/N I also don't own _Frankenstein_, but Mary Shelley may have been a remote relative of mine, so I'm hoping she wouldn't have minded a quick mention.

**Senseless**

Sofia was getting on well with Tony Lowther. This was fortunate, as currently the pair were making their way through the Nevada desert towards one of the three bunkers that the search for Matthews' base had finally been narrowed down to. Their mission was to identify which was the correct bunker and then call in a SWAT team; they were under strict instructions not to engage the man themselves. Brass had selected Sofia for the task because of her combined experience as both CSI and detective, and because he wasn't sure he could physically cope with the work himself, especially if Matthews was in the last of the underground shelters they were due to search, because by then the sun would be at it's highest and walking in the desert would be no picnic. Lowther was there to represent the Military Police's interest in the case, and also to provide a 'cover'."

Out there in the desert Matthews had a big advantage; it was impossible to just park a vehicle and stroll up to the building you wanted to inspect without being discovered. Most vehicles would stand out clearly from a long distance, and if they were discovered it would be hard to claim that they'd made a mistake and actually wanted the underground bunker next door. So Lowther had brought out a military jeep in desert camouflage colours. If they were lucky it would be harder to spot, especially as the plan was to park a mile or so from each target and then walk in. Even if the vehicle was noticed it would be in context with the military's general presence in the area. Likewise, if the worst happened, Lowther had a cover story set up about a military inspection of all its former installations to check they were still safe.

Slowly, and taking advantage of whatever cover they could find in the scrub landscape, the pair took a spiralling path in towards their first target. Sofia was searching intently for any signs of recent activity; while Lowther concentrated on making sure they had plenty of warning of unexpected observers.

As they rounded a small hillock, Sofia thought she spotted vehicle tracks. The blonde detective made to move closer and try and identify how long they had been there and what type of vehicle might have made them, but her companion held her back, indicating that she would be in plain view from the bunker if she did so. Sofia acknowledged this reluctantly, because now they would need to get even closer before they could establish if this was Matthews' hideout.

Sofia listened carefully as they got to a point down wind of the bunker hoping that the air would bring sounds with it.

Yes, there it was! The steady chug-chugging noise of a generator reached her ears. Sofia knew that Matthews would need a lot of power at his base, just keeping the bunker aired and ventilated underground would require a lot of energy, and the powerful operating theatre lights that Grissom had felt would need still more.

Sofia looked at her companion. Had they been lucky enough to find Matthews first time? Did they have enough evidence to warrant calling in SWAT to find out? Tony Lowther seemed to think so, he was pulling the walkie-talkie from his back pack. Sofia nodded to him and he began calling it in. This bunker had to be right, the location matched Matthews' extrapolated journey from the night Grissom was dumped and was also convenient for the site of the original truck crash. Matthews' former colleagues had said Matthews was probably aware of its existence when they had been questioned by the Military, plus the Military's records of the internal layout of the bunker matched Grissom's description of his route from the entrance to the room where he had been held. Now they had evidence that the bunker was inhabited, or had been until very recently. The only real risk was that Matthews might not be there right now, but even if he weren't there might be a vital clue to where they would find him.

Lowther and Sofia settled down to wait, the SWAT team would take a while to arrive, due to the landscape they had not been able to wait nearby for the call.

---

Catherine watched as her daughter carefully explained Grissom's options for his next move in the board game they were attempting to play. Gil was listening intently, his head tilted to one side. The bandanna over his eyes was a deep burgundy colour with spots in a slightly lighter shade of red. It suited him far better than the hot pink with silver pin-striped scarf which Lindsey had lent to him when he first came to stay.

Catherine was extremely proud of Lindsey, who was not only taking great care of her 'Uncle' but managing to do it without irritating him as well. Every day the teenager had found something different to amuse Grissom, finding ideas on the internet or managing to adapt games they already had to allow for his sightlessness with a surprising ingenuity. In spending time with Lindsey this way Grissom was learning to use his remaining senses together with his already excellent ability to visualise, and it was doing him a lot of good.

Lindsey was helping in other ways too. Catherine had noticed that Grissom was more inclined to eat properly when her daughter was at the table with them. She wasn't sure if he was trying to hide his lack of interest in food from her daughter, or was simply more distracted by the conversation going on around him, either way she was glad of anything which persuaded Gil to bother with food, the taste of which he now found to be just bland, insipid, nothingness.

Catherine was less happy about what would happen when Lindsey went back to school the following day. Despite the outward signs of improvement there were other signals that indicated all was not well with her old friend. Even though Warrick had picked up a new cane for Grissom from the hospital the day after Gil had been released, Lindsey was the only person who had been able to get him to go outdoors and even then only as far as their back yard. The various officers who had been assigned to protect Grissom must be bored with staring at the front of my house, Catherine thought.

There was one other big difference about Grissom - he was afraid of telephones.

After going over the pieces of Griss' cell 'phone for evidence, Archie had carefully copied the contents of the SIM onto a replacement card and even managed to source an identical hand set so that his boss wouldn't have to get used to a new one. Despite all the lab tech's efforts Grissom kept the 'phone almost permanently switched off, using it only to make outgoing calls, and refusing to check his voice mail. If any other 'phone rang he visibly jumped and there was no way he could be persuaded to pick up the call.

One time both the Willows had gone out and Catherine had left the answering machine on. When they'd returned a vase had been knocked over in the lounge and Grissom was nowhere to be seen. Fortunately Catherine had decided to double check everywhere before alerting Grissom's protection detail. She found Grissom hiding in the guest bedroom closet, his hands held tightly over his ears, still trying to shut out the sound of the voice message that had been left nearly an hour earlier. The vase had been knocked over as he'd rushed to get as far from the telephone as possible.

As she'd gently rocked Grissom in an effort to calm him down, Catherine had mentally cursed Matthews. She had seen fear on Grissom's face before, if shots were fired nearby or when he knew that one of his team was in danger, but he could show such fear and then go on to do what needed to be done, like delivering the ransom for Nick. That showed how brave Grissom truly could be, but now her friend's courage seemed to be draining away. The man she had found cowering in a cupboard was not the Gil Grissom she knew, and she prayed that his world would right itself soon.

In order for that to happen they had to catch Matthews.

---

Like little black beetles on a sand dune the SWAT team crawled all over the desert bunker. Cautiously, carefully every crevice, every corridor and every room was searched.

Sofia Curtis had never been so disappointed to hear so many cries of "Clear", she wanted to hear that they'd got someone, got Matthews, got the perp. and, frankly, she agreed with the old 'Wanted' posters - she'd take him 'Dead or Alive'.

Right now it seemed neither was going to happen. Finally the Lieutenant in charge of the SWAT team emerged from the bunker.

"No sign of the target," he said. "Looks like you got the right place, though. Real mad scientist stuff going on in there, but you may as well look for yourselves, it's all clear now."

Three doorways, two flights of stairs going downwards and another two doors, Sofia and Lowther retraced the route Grissom had taken and entered the room he'd been held in. Sofia sucked in a breath, 'mad scientist' was about right. Half operating room, half torture chamber; surgical implements were everywhere and anatomical charts of various types covered the walls. In the centre a large and powerful light, identical to the ones in Al Robbins domain, was suspended from the ceiling. The unit was aimed at a tall, wooden chair with straps attached in various places and an adjustable frame a little larger than a man's head was attached to top of the back rest. _An electric chair designed by Frankenstein,_ thought Sofia, staring at it.

Even without Matthews, the discovery of his base was a coup; the place was knee deep with evidence which could almost certainly be used to link all the cases they were investigating. Hopefully something would give them a clue to Matthews' present whereabouts too.

"I'm gonna call in," Sofia told Lowther as she pulled out her cell 'phone and headed towards the exit in search of a signal. "We need as many CSIs as possible on this, ASAP."

"OK," responded Lowther, who had also been looking around the chamber, careful not to touch anything, "maybe you should let them know that there's something missing besides our psychopathic friend."

Sofia paused and looked at the Lieutenant questioningly.

"No laser." he said.

---

Grissom and Lindsey's game appeared to be coming to the end when Catherine felt her 'phone vibrate inside her pocket. To avoid upsetting Grissom she left the room before answering it.

On her return Lindsey was just tidying up. As her daughter moved past her to take the game back to her room, Catherine mimed for her to give her a few minutes to talk to Grissom alone. Lindsey shrugged and then nodded. Catherine moved to sit next to Grissom at the table.

"So, who won?"

"Lindsey, of course. If I didn't know her better I'd say she was taking advantage." Grissom smiled, but he appeared tired, concentrating on the game seemed to have taken it out of him. "How long before dinner?" he asked, "I might take a nap before then, if there's time."

"Sure," said Catherine as she checked her watch. "You should be able to get a couple of hours, but I need to talk to you first."

"OK." Grissom responded, cautiously. He passed his hand over his face below the bandanna in his trademark fatigue banishing gesture.

"I just got a call. Something's come up, and while I don't have to go in early, it looks like I'll be pulling a double, which means I won't be back in time to be here with you while Lindsey is in school. All things considered I'm not exactly happy about leaving you alone for that long, but most of our team will be doing the double too, so I was wondering if you have any suggestions?"

Grissom's first instinct was to say he'd be fine alone, but after the closet incident he found he wasn't so sure about that any more. He hated the feeling. _I can't carry on like this _he thought, _I have to do__ something to get my life back._

"Could you call Jim Brass for me, please Cath? Maybe he'd come stay with me for a couple of hours and there's something I need to talk to him about."

Catherine agreed and Grissom sat back while she arranged things with Jim, including a special knock to reassure Grissom that it wasn't anyone else at the door.

Satisfied everything was arranged, Grissom half smiled to himself as he felt his way towards the guest room for his nap. _It will be good to see Jim,_ he thought,_ and I think I might just have a plan._

A/N Just to let you know I'm nearing the end of this. I can't tell you how many more instalments or when just yet, because my writing never goes precisely to plan, but probably only another two or three chapters. I hope the ending doesn't disappoint you all when it comes, especially after your glowing reviews - some of which make me blush when I read them ;o)


	19. Chapter 19

I make no claim to own CSI, the characters or any of the situations therein, I write in homage, with no intent to steal.

A/N I did ask Santa for a cuddly Grissom, but he says I've treated this one so badly I can't have another. :o(

A/N2 Here's a special, double length episode for all of you who complained about my cliff-hangers.

**Senseless**

"No, no, absolutely not, no way." Jim Brass was in a difficult situation. He hated every part of the plan that Grissom had just outlined to him, but he couldn't tell his friend why without breaking his promise to keep Gil in the dark about the case and everything connected with it.

"Jim, I have to get my life back, or at least as much as I can. We both know that means putting the guy who did this to me in jail."

"I agree Gil, but..."

"Look at me Jim. I'm scared to go out, I jump ten feet anytime I hear a 'phone ring, and the main reason you're here is because I can't cope with being left alone for more than a couple of hours without freaking. I need to know he's off the streets, Jim, and if I can do anything to help make that happen I will. If I succeed then maybe it will help give me the confidence I need to move on."

"And if you don't succeed you could end up under his control again and have made him mad at you at the same time. C'mon, Gil, you can't seriously be telling me you want to risk doing this."

"Right now I'm _already_ under his control. This is the only thing I can do about it and, unless you can guarantee you'll have this guy in custody during the next twenty-four hours, then whether I _want_ to do this or not I will still _need_ to."

There was silence for several moments. Jim stared hard at his friend, taking in the determined set of Gil's body, mouth and chin. The bandanna and the gradually fading bruises tacitly explained why Grissom was so certain of his decision to try this.

"OK," Brass finally spoke, his voice quietened in defeat, "what is the final word?"

"Disaster." Grissom replied.

---

Stage one of Grissom's plan involved 'immunising' him against Matthews' trigger phrase, by having Brass repeat it to him over and over until Gil could resist the urge to obey the suggestion associated with it. Brass found this a major concern. Captain Harvey had put the detective in touch with an expert on posthypnotic suggestion. He'd had a long discussion with the man about how best to help Gil. Removing the influence over Grissom would not be as simple as giving him another dose of the hypnotic drug and telling him to forget about it. Grissom's personality and recent experiences both meant he would not be able to relax enough to work easily with a hypnotherapist; therefore the best plan would be simply to let him forget naturally over time. Because the suggestion had been placed on a single occasion this would happen pretty fast, provided Grissom wasn't reminded of the suggestions too often.

Doing what Gil was asking Jim to do was flying in the face of that advice, but every time the detective tried to say something Grissom demanded he repeat the phrase again. Then, teeth gritted and jaw tensed, Griss tried to stop himself from speaking, however strong the urge to spout everything he knew about the case. Mercifully, as they had discovered the first time Grissom heard the trigger phrase in full, that appeared to be relatively little, but for his plan to work Gil needed to hide even that. Eventually Grissom was able to keep pretty quiet without looking like a gargoyle in the process.

"Remember, Jim, as far as Catherine is concerned, you've just been helping me cope with using the telephone so I can move back home."

"She won't like that idea." Jim replied. "Catherine still blames herself for your abduction. I can't imagine she'll let you out of her sight that easily."

"Leave that with me, Jim. Just be ready to help with the other things I'll need."

---

Jim was a little happier about the next part of Grissom's plan but, even so, he was busy trying to make sure it wasn't necessary to go any further. So it had been Nick and Warrick who had been in charge of getting Grissom back to his townhouse, their vehicle escorted by Grissom's ever present protection officers. Once Griss had convinced them he'd be fine the two CSIs had gone and Grissom was alone for the first time.

He had made several 'concessions' to Catherine to persuade her that he would be safe. One of these was keeping the protection officers nearby (he'd never intended to give them up). Another was the small GPS tracking device that he was absent-mindedly fiddling with where it lay hidden by his clothing. The final part of the deal was that he wouldn't leave his home unaccompanied. That suited Grissom just fine, he was still nervous about the idea and, for his scheme to work, it was vital that the only way his nemesis could contact him was by telephone. Even his decision to leave Catherine's house had been to encourage this, because his land line number should be pretty easy for the creep to get hold of.

---

Was this it? Grissom fought back waves of panic as his home 'phone began to ring. Slowly he rose and, fighting his instincts, walked toward the noise. _Maybe its Catherine checking up on me,_ he told himself, _she'll worry if I don't answer_.

Warily he lifted the handset and raised it to his ear. A voice spoke and the handset fell to the floor. As Griss knelt and started to feel around to locate it he could sense his right hand spasming slightly, if he needed any proof beyond his own ears this was it, his torturer was on the other end of the line. Grissom used the enforced interruption to focus himself to resist his trigger phrase then, having found the handset he lifted it back to his ear, being careful to use his left hand this time.

"H-hello?" he wished he could keep the stammer out of his voice.

"Hello, Doctor Grissom, for a moment I thought you'd hung up on me."

"No, it's just w-w-when I heard your voice my hand..." _Come on Gilbert, control yourself, he's not here, he can't touch you._

"Ah yes, it seems your suggestion worked, well done for coming up with it. Shall we give my idea a try next?" There was a brief pause, Grissom used it to take a few deep breaths, and then Matthews spoke again. "Purple, July, disaster." he said.

"W-well I-I-I th-th-they know-no-no no. NO. I won't, I won't h-h-help you. I won't help you." _Well at least the last sentence came out right. _

"Oh well done, Doctor Grissom, been practising have we? Perhaps I should have paid more attention to your advice. Still, never mind I'll just have to get the information from you another way. Unfortunately for you I suspect that means we'll have to meet again."

"I-I won't give you that ch-chance." _actually I will._

"Make sure you check your mail tomorrow, Doctor Grissom, you'll find a tape with instructions for our meeting on it. I recommend you tell no-one of our arrangements. Goodbye for now."

"W-Wait, please. Remember you b-blinded me. Telling no-one or getting anywhere alone just isn't possible for me any more." Finally Grissom was getting the stuttering under control, but it was too late, the dial tone buzzed in his ear.

---

When they arrived the instructions were clear and simple. Matthews must have heard Grissom's last few words because following the instructions would require the help of more than one person. Unfortunately the man had found a way to ensure co-operation.

Matthews had selected a park in Henderson which was closed to the public at dusk. That evening the park gates were to be left open after the public were gone. Grissom was to be driven to a certain spot in the middle of the park. The person who drove him was to take Grissom to a specified place, then handcuff his hands behind his back. The key of the cuffs was to be shown clearly, and then hung around Grissom's neck. After this had been done the vehicle used was to be driven out of the park and at least one mile further without stopping. Grissom was to wait where he was until contacted. No-one else should be in the park.

The driver was to be "the young guy you were at the truck accident with."

Failure to follow instructions would result in "a lot of kids will be blinded just like you. Can you imagine it? Kids in pain and unable to see. Pretty hard to evacuate a group like that, especially if some of their carers have been blinded too. And they _will_ need to evacuate. I disconnected all the device's safeties, once the timer fires the laser it won't turn of until it overheats and you wouldn't want to be there when that happens."

Gil got hold of Brass as fast as he could. Once he knew things were going ahead, Jim went to collect Grissom and the tape. After the pair had dealt with the angry reaction from Grissom's friends and colleagues when his plan was revealed, they adjourned to the layout room and started planning.

If they were going to apprehend Matthews they needed to make sure of the laser's location first, it was unlikely that Matthews would give up its position under interrogation. Nobody felt that Matthews could be trusted to disable his device or give them its location even if he got everything his own way either.

For a while they threw around ideas but didn't come up with anything useful.

Grissom was sitting waiting outside the layout room, still trying to ensure he wouldn't be able to tell his kidnapper much if he did end up in his hands. As he lingered he thought about the recording on the tape. Suddenly he got up and knocked on the door, attracting the attention of the group inside.

"Movie theatres." He said. "They're dark, everyone faces in the same direction, and if he picks the right movie then the audience will be mainly kids. That's what he's done. The laser will be hidden somewhere near or immediately behind the screen, so the light can shine directly into the audience."

It made perfect sense. A list of movie theatres showing kid's films that evening was drawn up, a couple of regular theatres with kid's shows playing were added to it and teams were set up to search all the venues as fast as possible without sacrificing thoroughness. There was a deadline to beat.

In the mean time Brass took Grissom on a visit to meet the LVPD's gadget boys.

---

Greg brought the car to a halt at the allotted place.

"Are you sure about this, Grissom? It's the last chance to change your mind."

"I think I passed that point a while ago Greg. This has to be done. If Brass has found the laser then all this might be over in just a few minutes, if not then it should be possible to trace me fast and get him that way. We are going to get this guy, Greg, one way or another."

"What if he hurts you? I could never forgive myself if I just handed you over for him to do that again."

"It wouldn't be your fault, Greg, it was my idea to do this, and the creep's idea that you should bring me. If it helps, I'm kind of glad he did. You were there for me when this started, now you're here again. I know it's little more than superstition, but it feels to me like it's a sign things are coming to an end. Now let's get on with this, if our guy is watching he'll be wondering what we've suddenly found to talk about."

Grissom unbuckled his seat-belt and started to get out of the Denali. Seeing that he wasn't getting a choice, Greg quickly checked the earpiece he'd been given was still in place, then hurried out of the vehicle and round the front to reach his boss. After leading Grissom over to the exact spot that Matthews had specified he moved behind Grissom and, reluctantly, got out the handcuffs. Hiding his movements with his body, he pulled out the small release button that was hidden in Grissom's sleeve and placed it in Griss' right hand. Grissom took it and squeezed it in his fist. A voice in Greg's earpiece confirmed that the signal had been received. Matthews' threat was enough that no-one was going to risk being seen watching the meeting, so this signal had been arranged to make sure everyone could stay well back until the last moment. Matthews' voice would cause Grissom to release the switch, which would then disappear back up his sleeve on a piece of elastic. The release would pass a signal back announcing the perp.'s arrival to control.

Moving faster now to avoid raising suspicion Greg clicked the handcuffs into place, Grissom managed to suppress his wince as the cold metal gripped his still bruised and swollen wrists, he didn't want Greg to feel worse than he did already. Standing perfectly still Grissom waited as Greg held the handcuffs' key in the air briefly before hanging it on its string around Grissom's neck. Greg gave him one final good luck wish, then went back to the truck. He listened as the vehicle's engine started and Greg drove off, following his part of the instructions to the letter.

Minutes passed.

Suddenly there were rapid footsteps behind Grissom. Before he could turn around an arm was round his neck, bending him backwards to rest the back of his head against his captor's shoulder. The former soldier was a couple of inches shorter than his victim, who could feel his back arching uncomfortably. Grissom let go of the switch without waiting for Matthews to speak. It was fortunate he did, Matthews was using his free hand to check the handcuffs had been locked properly, and might have found the thin elastic thread, giving the game away.

After checking the handcuffs Matthew's checked Grissom's pockets, finding them empty as he'd specified he released Grissom's neck, keeping control of him by holding onto the chain linking his hands.

"Time to go, Doctor Grissom. Just keep walking forwards unless I turn you. Remember, mess me around and not just you but a lot of children will suffer."

"Which children? Where did you put the laser?" Despite his fear, Grissom was angry and it was enough to overcome the stutter which had plagued him during his previous 'phone conversation with Matthews.

"You don't expect me to answer that do you? Once we get to my van I'm gonna have you strip. Until then I don't know what you've got under those clothes, I gave you longer than I should have to prepare. What I do know is that you're in no position to negotiate with me for your co-operation." Matthews yanked hard on Grissom's cuffed wrists for emphasis.

Grissom hoped that Matthews would think that his wince was due to the rough handling of his wrists. He schooled his features into his habitual emotionless mask, hoping to cover his fear of what would happen if his tormentor found the release button and GPS. Last time he'd been taken Matthews hadn't bothered to strip search him. They should not have taken it for granted that he wouldn't bother this time either.

---

Greg drove just far enough away to satisfy Matthews' demands, then parked and circled his way round on foot to where Brass and a group of uniformed officers were stationed. More uniforms under Vega's command were located on the other side of the park.

Brass greeted Greg. "The search teams are down to the last two venues. If Grissom was right about Matthews picking a movie theatre then we'll know in the next few minutes. If he's wrong, or Gil can't stall him for long enough then we'll have to go to our alternate plan, I just hope Matthews doesn't find the GPS, so we can keep track of our guy."

Team 'A', Sofia, Catherine, Warrick and half a dozen cadets, called in a minute later. No luck, Greg's hands were shaking almost as much as they'd done after the lab explosion, now it was all down to team 'B', led by Vartaan, Sara and Nick. Fortunately their call came in soon.

"They've got it! Place has been closed down until the laser has been disabled. Now it's our turn. Let's move - remember folks, keep it slow and silent, Doctor Grissom's life may depend on it. Brass turned to his radio, instructing Vega to get his team moving too. Grissom's GPS signal indicated he was slowly heading north, so Brass made sure both teams took that into consideration as they crept into the park.

Greg was already slipping on a bullet proof vest. His gun was holstered at his side. Much as he hated carrying a weapon he knew Brass wouldn't let him join the rescue mission without it, and there was no way he was going to stay behind.

---

As he managed to catch sight of Grissom and his captor for the first time, Brass mentally congratulated his friend. Gil was emphasising the rolling gait his bowed legs and damaged knees gave him. It was slowing the pair's progress right down, particularly as Grissom was also slowly drifting to his right, forcing Matthews to keep correcting their direction. They seemed to be heading for a dark red van parked nearby. Brass estimated they had about seventy yards still to go; it didn't give him much time to get his men in position. A voice came through Jim's earpiece; one of the officers had spotted a hand gun tucked into Matthews' waistband. Brass wondered if Gil was aware of it.

Brass made his instructions clear, if Matthews hand even touched the gun he was to be shot down, but only if the officer had a clear angle well away from Grissom. "If in doubt don't" was his simple warning.

"Remember our vic. can't see, so he won't know which way to move if things get hairy, so let's keep this as clean as we can.

"Everyone in position? OK. Let me break cover first." Jim stepped out from behind the statue he was using for cover.

"Matthews! Yeah, we know your name and a lot of other stuff too. Now, let go of Doctor Grissom, turn around and walk towards me. Keep your hands where I can see them and don't go for the gun, you're completely surrounded, you've no escape route and sooner or later you'll end up in a position where we can take you down without harming Doctor Grissom."

Matthews said nothing, but shifted his grip on Grissom so that once again he had his arm around Gil's neck. With his head resting on his captor's shoulder once again, Grissom was aware of Matthews breathing becoming more agitated. He tried to keep his own breathing steady, but it was difficult as the arm around his neck was putting pressure on his windpipe.

The more anxious Matthews was becoming, the more his muscles tensed and the tighter his grip on Grissom's neck became. Gil knew he'd black out if things didn't change soon. If he did he'd become a dead weight and knock the smaller man off balance. Should he risk that and hope Brass' men didn't think he'd been killed outright and start getting careless with their weapons? Maybe he should try and warn Matthews, who might not realise that he was having difficulties? He didn't have long to decide.

"Need air." Talking was using up precious oxygen, but Grissom had to risk it.

"What?" Matthews snapped at him, wary of being distracted from finding a way out.

"Air." Grissom gasped again.

Suddenly realising how tightly he was gripping his captive Matthews eased off. Struggling to keep track of everything that was going on, the trapped man over compensated. The sudden loosening of his captor's grip made Grissom stumble slightly. As Gil's movement caught Matthews unaware the soldier was knocked off balance. Despite his oxygen deprivation Grissom managed to think quickly. Using his shoulder he barged Matthews away from him, leaving clear space between them.

Suddenly Matthews was surrounded by men with guns, every one of them aimed directly at him.

Police officers ran to apprehend Matthews. The criminal, knowing that drawing his gun would be fatal, settled on one last gesture of defiance. Taking a step back towards his former victim, he swung a powerful fist into Grissom's jaw. Unable to see it coming, or to use his hands to save himself, Grissom fell backwards heavily, stunned.

The officers had secured Matthews now and Brass started to recite his MIRANDA rights to him. Greg ran over to Grissom and helped him sit up so that Greg could unlock the handcuffs. Grissom felt blood in his mouth. Still a little stunned his mind was wandering, he thought about how it had become 'common knowledge' that blood tasted of copper. The main metal in blood was the iron in haemoglobin. In Grissom's personal opinion what blood actually tasted like was rust. Suddenly a grin exploded over Grissom's face, despite his rapidly swelling split lip.

"You know, Greg, however he might choose to see himself, that man is no scientist. All his efforts have been based on little other than trial and error."

Confused, and hoping Grissom hadn't been concussed, (well how often did Griss smile so widely you could see his teeth?), Greg did not respond, concentrating instead on getting Griss back on his feet. Once he was standing, Grissom turned to face the place where he had heard Brass arrest Matthews.

"Hey you, _Idiot_." he shouted, knowing the word would upset his tormentor far more than any coarser epithet. "I have another failed experiment to add to your list." Grissom paused for a moment, licking his lips and relishing it.

"I can taste again!" Grissom yelled, elated.

"I can taste again." he repeated to himself in a half whisper.

Some of the people present seemed stunned at Grissom's excitement, especially those that knew him as 'The Ice Man'. Having gone several days without the sense, and after all Matthews had put him through, Gilbert Grissom himself found this an extra triumph that made his tormentor's capture even sweeter. Just like the toffee pecan cheesecake he planned to treat himself to as soon as possible.

FIN

A/N Well, not quite;

Ladies and Gentlemen, pray remain seated and await - _The Epilogue_...

But just in case I don't get it posted in time, I'd like to take this opportunity to wish you all best wishes for whatever festival you celebrate at this time of year.


	20. Epilogue

I make no claim to own CSI, the characters or any of the situations therein, I write in homage, with no intent to steal.

**Senseless**

_**Epilogue**_

Jim Brass stood outside the house which was now officially a crime scene. He flipped open his cell phone and hit a speed dial number.

"Dispatch."

"This is Captain Brass. Confirm the 420 at 1153 Mayhill. Request a CSI to attend ASAP."

"OK, Jim I'll pass that on, Catherine should have someone out to you soon."

_Jim? Catherine?_ OK, that was weird, but Dispatch had rung off and he had work to do. Putting the call to the back of his mind Jim set about the normal tasks of getting the scene taped off and organising officers to canvass the neighbours. Then he went to talk to the woman who had reported the crime.

It was nearly an hour before Jim was able to check in on CSI. Nick Stokes had finished his preliminary inspection of the scene and was now concentrating on finger printing. Jim felt it was safe to engage in a casual conversation with the Texan.

"Hey Nick, you doin' OK?"

They exchanged pleasantries, then Jim asked Nick if he knew how Grissom was.

"He seems fine. Been nearly a week since I last saw him, I go over to his place on Thursdays and help him with his grocery shop. Then I help Griss make sure everything's labelled properly and stored in the right place. Cath and Warrick see him in between my visits but he's been a lot more independent recently, that AFB course really gave him confidence. He's already taking advanced Braille classes and he goes to those and his hospital appointments on the bus now. Warrick was quite upset when he lost his chauffeuring job - though he's still officially curator of small creatures." Nick finished, jokingly.

"Thanks for the update. I must call Gil sometime, drag him out for a drink." Jim told Nick before excusing himself.

---

Returning to PD Jim dumped his paperwork in his office, and then hurried along the corridor to where Dispatch was located. He was beginning to think he'd imagined his conversation with the Dispatch officer earlier, but he couldn't resist checking.

It wasn't hard to spot him, he'd been allocated a work station near the door. A headset rested on the greying curls and Grissom's hands moved frequently between the keyboard and a long box below it which was converting the information on the screen into Braille. Another operator was sitting beside Gil, occasionally checking his work, but it seemed there was little the man needed to correct.

Brass signalled to the supervising operator that he'd like to speak to Grissom and the young man moved to take over Griss' position telling him to take a ten minute break.

Grissom stood and moved towards the door, where Brass intercepted him. Together they crossed the busy corridor to the Dispatch officers' break room.

"I'm glad you turned up", Grissom joked, "someone always bumps into me when I try and get here on my own. Can I get you a coffee?"

Jim declined, and then watched as Gil competently went about making a mug for himself using a finger hooked over the lip of the mug to make sure he didn't over fill it.

"So, you're working Dispatch now?"

"Yeah, just three nights a week for now, they had the Braille equipment already and there's always a problem covering nights so Personnel asked me. My touch typing and Braille are pretty much up to standard and it gives me something different to do. Being based here suits me too, I'm still doing some consulting over at CSI, but I wouldn't want to get in Catherine's way, PD's just far enough away from the Lab. to avoid that. Plus the bus route over from my part of town is ideal."

Grissom finished making his coffee and felt his way to a nearby chair. Brass settled himself beside his old friend. Jim wasn't surprised that Gil's Braille skills were already up to doing a job like Dispatch. Grissom had a natural knack for learning and if he had reason to put his mind to mastering something he usually did it much faster than was normal for most people. Brass was certain that his friend would be good at the job too, Gil's ability to keep his voice calm and steady would help in dealing with distraught members of the public, and his knowledge of police procedure would make it easier to cope with the cops who called in too.

Jim had noticed that Grissom was wearing regular dark glasses now, a pair that didn't even fit that closely to his face.

"Have you decided to drop the bandanna look now?" He asked.

"Not entirely, I still use them if I'm outdoors during the brightest part of the day, but I find light less painful now, so these are fine at night or indoors. I've been having a new treatment, something Moorfields came up with for Anne Harris. I can tell light from dark now and I've even started to get some of my peripheral vision back. My ophthalmologist wants me to use it as much as I can and these glasses don't obscure it so much. To be honest it's more of a distraction than anything right now. I see something out of the corner of my eye, then I automatically turn to look at whatever it is and it disappears into the black hole in the middle. I'm told I'll get more used to it in time." Grissom stopped to take another sip of coffee. He still relished being able to taste properly again.

"So, how's Miss Harris doing?"

"OK apparently, but I don't know any details, my doctor doesn't want me to make any assumptions about my treatment, I'm older than Anne and before this I was far sighted whereas she had short sight, plus I went longer between being attacked and starting the treatment. There are no guarantees with this Jim, one of us may do better than the other in the long term, but even the doctors can't predict who it might be, or how much vision either of us will have in the end."

"But at least things are improving?"

"Yeah, Jim," Grissom gave a half smile, "things are improving."

The two men sat in comfortable silence for a couple of minutes.

"You know they should have you back at the lab, you've shown you can still close a case, and you did it blindfold."

"Yeah, Jim, but now they know I can do that, the next time they'll expect me to do it with one hand tied behind my back too."

"As I recall it was both hands." Jim deadpanned. "Breakfast after shift?" he asked, realising Grissom's break was almost over.

"Thanks, Jim," Grissom replied, rising to his feet, "I'd like that."

A/N OK, maybe not a happy ending, but I'd like to think it's a hopeful one. I didn't want to just wave a magic wand, so I tried to be realistic about Grissom's sight, and show his resilience in coping with his handicap.

Well there it is, thanks for staying through to the end. Like it or loathe it, this is your last chance to review...

_Please?_


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